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The Linux Documentation Project Turns 10
"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.
TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.
TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.
For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."
The RTFM expression turns 10 too!
now maybe it will stop wetting the bed.
ten years later..
:)
the gentoo forums..
probably the best place to find a fanatical how-to on anything..
by fanatics, for fanatics
(we are all a little fanatical here)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Of course one must be willing to RTF-how-to.
So on this the 10th anniversary of the How-to, here is a little "up-yours-clippy" :)~
I remember using the early HOWTOs to compile my first Linux kernel (back in the days when your distro didn't come with a one-size-fits-all), setup my first PPP connection for my 14.4 Internet connection.
Many thanks to all those who have contributed over the years. The community is in your debt.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The projects so good that publishers just publish HOWTO's verbatim ocassionally, for print.
What we need is a user friendly "linux documentation" that uses X. It should allow complete customization of everything that is normally done at the command line. Man pages aren't near user friendly enough - they are way too technical. General help, examples, common options, FAQs, and advanced options for each topic would be ideal. Or, if the person doesn't like the command line, they could do it with the central linux configuration UI. It shouldn't be a limited subset specific to each distribution, it should be centralized. The LDP would be a good place for much of the help information, but more 'dummed down' versions would also be necessary.
--
The Zingler
Now I'm proud to run a machine that's over twice as fast, with three times the memory! And I still use Matt Walsh's writings to get by. Three Cheers and a virtual beer!
This is not my sandwich.
Now blow out your candles and update your howtos damnit!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You know, I'd just be happy with documentation on par with the FreeBSD Handbook. Seriously. I picked up a copy years ago (BSD 4.4 I believe) and it covered just about everything you'd ever need to know to get started and was extremely well-written.
I've *never* found an equivalent to that book for Linux and it's a damn shame.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
...and most of their docs are celebrating their 10th year anniversary since their last change/update.
Ok, so it's a slight exaggeration, but an enormous number of TLDP documents- mostly HOWTOs- are so horribly, embarrassingly out of date that they are completely, entirely, useless. Like the networking related howtos that cover 2.0 kernel features...
I cannot actually think of a single major HOWTO that I've actually found up-to-date enough to be useable on a linux distro released in the last 2 years.
Please help metamoderate.
First of all, I'd like to debunk the idea that, "there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation." That's BS--Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades. Four feet of manuals (man pages, install guides, networking config, X programming, etc., etc., etc.) were considered absolutely essential material back in the day, and they were generally really good! Today we have docs.(vendor).com, as a pretty damned fine replacement. At no point in recent history has the Unix community suffered from a general shortage of good documentation.
Now the LDP has come a long way in the last ten years, and let me join with everyone here in saying, "Congratulations! Linux wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is without you."
That said, there are two fundamental weaknesses that stem from the nature of the LDP, and I'd like to see some way of modifying the project to address them as much as possible.
First of all is the lack of a formal review process. As I understand it, anyone can submit a doc, and it will by accepted if it meets basic criteria. (mostly proper SGML/Docbook formatting.)
There really needs to be a review process, similar to code review for proper software projects. (of course, a project should also have a documentation writer/maintainer, which would invalidate much of the LDP, but I digress...) I have seen HOWTOs which were unintelligible, incomplete, unmaintained, and wildly inaccurate. Without grammar and technical review, stuff like this just keeps popping up at random.
The second problem is something that the LDP cannot (and shouldn't have to) correct on its own. It's incomplete--it is not a complete repository of Linux documentation, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, it shouldn't have to be--software should come with documentation! Howtos and guides should be supplements to that documentation, not the only source for it. Unfortunately, freelance developers don't always see things that way.
Anyways, enough sour grapes. Happy Birthday LDP! Keep on going, and keep on gettting better.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
While I've looked to LDP for Howto's and information about specific Linux setup issues, there's another entirely different reason I keep tabs on them:
They're interested in being able to automatically generate high quality documents in a variety of formats, including both LaTeX and HTML.I've been interested in authoring options using DocBook that would enable me to produce highly flexible document sources based on open standards that would be useful long into the future.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The Linux Newbie Ask Question HowTo
Wrong way:
- How do I do <what you have a problem with> in Linux?
Answer:
- RTFM!!!
Right way:
- Linux sucks! Doing <what you have a problem with> is so easy in Windows, I'll switch back soon...
Answer:
- Don't switch! The solution to <what you have a problem with> is simple, just do this: <an elaborate, newbie-friendly answer>
Karma. Moderation. Is my
On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.
... but I'm sure in the not so distant future something even cooler, from some other quadrant, will come along and surpass it.
... others in the list, particularly those with strong partisan feelings toward another distribution, would probably argue the former. For me, personally, it is irrelevant, and while I do not go around telling everyone they should run Gentoo (a Knoppix Live CD is a far better thing to give a newbie than a Gentoo Live CD, for obvious reasons ... indeed, it is often a better rescue CD for Gentoo systems than a Gentoo LiveCD is), I am certainly not one to apologize for recommending it when I think it will solve someone's problems.
One of Gentoo's real strenths is that it provides the tools that take the tedium out of dependency resolution and compilation (a form of *BSD 'ports' on steroids), without obfuscating the underlying *NIX configurations and filesystem organization. This allows relative newcomers to learn how to setup a GNU/Linux system step by step, understand its organization and how it all fits together, without getting lost in the quagmire of learning the intricacies of autoconf, make, gcc, python or perl scripting.
People who are in to such things tend to become quite ecstatic when they discover such a platform, and such an implimentation. The rest of us, who like to just get work done with a minimum of fuss, may or may not find it appealing. I personally find it to be the best distro I've used by far (and I've been using Linux since the days before distros of any kind even existed...before X even ran on it)
People that use Gentoo and know Linux are cool. They don't run around the internet telling everyone about Gentoo, either. There is another type of Gentoo user...I'm honestly very sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics.
Well, as with any project, there are those few who are rabidly zealous and seem to have an overdeveloped evangelical streak. Debian, Mandrake, and others have had their fair share of overzealous enthusiasts as well (as does Mac OS X and, I fear, Windows...though one never knows how many of the latter aren't simply bought and paid for, at sub-industry wages and without medical benefits, no doubt).
I am glad, however, that they are evangelizing a Linux distro rather than a real-world religious cult a la $cientology or Mormonism. That having been said, it is natural for people who discover something new that really, really rocks in their mind to want to tell others, particularly if they think it might help someone who is having trouble.
An example where I was guilty of this was with 'transcode', a swiss-army knife tool for converting between various audio and video formats, backing up DVDs, and even authoring one's own DVDs from home video footage. It is a bear to compile, having done so myself under Mandrake, Debian, and others. Someone was having an inordinant amount of trouble getting the thing to work under Mandrake (the binaries didn't work properly, and the source dependencies are, well, hellacious to put it mildly). Having been down that road myself under both Debian and Mandrake, and having found it incredibly easy to install under Gentoo, I suggested that the user might want to try out Gentoo as an alternative. He did, got the thing installed with no trouble, and was greatful.
The question is, was that an off-topic bit of gentoo zealotry, or an ontopic suggestion to someone having trouble getting a notoriously difficult-to-install package running? The person I replied to would argue the latter
No distro can claim the fact that it has indirectly made thousands of users cringe
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy