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Is Linux Documentation Lacking?
eldavojohn writes "A number of blog posts are surfacing that are calling out the helpful open source community on their documentation. No, not the documentation for the highly skilled technical people, but the documentation from beginner to apprentice. A two-part series by Carla Schroeder lists bad documentation as 'Linux Bug #1' and advises users to use Google as the documentation. We've discussed before some of open source's documentation being out of date. Is it really as bad as these blogs paint it? Has it come down to using Google before a man page?"
Wireless Howto
Wireless Howto
Roberto Arcomano berto@fatamorgana.com
v1.6 - July 31, 2002
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The whole Linux Mindset to documentation can be summed up in the phrase "use the man page". Yeah, right. Man pages are only semi-useful if you ALREADY KNOW WHAT COMMAND YOU NEED. Trying to FIND the command to do something is nearly impossible. Almost as bad as trying to find out how to configure something. (just edit the twiddly.da config file in the googly.plex directory, note that the syntax is completely different from every other config file on the system.)
Writing documentation is hard work and is boring. It is also thankless.
Amen. But, believe it or not there are people out there looking to assist open source by doing tech/doc writing for it. The comments in that thread have some really good resources if anyone out there is in total despair or is curious how they can help out open source documentation. I probably should have linked to that in the summary but my submissions have been way too link heavy lately.
My work here is dung.
True - though something is lacking in TFA: there is a diff between hitting the docs for learning, and hitting them for troubleshooting.
The man pages are more for learning (you can troubleshoot with them too, but diagnostic info in them are going to be lacking, just like trying to rely on the Windows Help files to fix a busted Exchange connector). Odds are, a beginner/apprentice won't know what to do with 'em for fixing a problem unless he/she is a royal badass at general computing/programming practices.
For troubleshooting, you're gonna have to hit Google - you have better odds there that someone else had the same problem and posted it (and its solution). There was once a time when you could write up docs for troubleshooting and diagnostics, covering up to 80% or more of what most folks run up against.
It still boils down to upping your skills on the OS and on general practices, though.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?