Holger Wansing wrote: >>> Removing some of that questions would be good indeed. >> >> Or indeed adding new ones. Newcomers probably have questions these >> days about things the FAQ is too old to know anything about, like >> systemd, or wifi firmware, or multiarch, or even Ubuntu. > > Yes, but a complete new creation of texts is ATM not the primary scope of > this review.
You're right; if I've got the energy to try to write some I could submit them as wishlist patches. >>>> I think /dev/dsp is a relic from the days before ALSA; these days it's >>>> /dev/snd/*, and the access rights are increasingly handled via ACLs >>>> managed by logind. >>> >>> Yes, /dev/dsp is not existing on my Jessie system. >>> So we could use "/dev/sda" instead, as owned by group "disk". >> >> Yes, that example still works, but it would be unusual to add a user >> to that group... is "cdrom" still useful, perhaps? > > "/dev/sr0 belongs to cdrom group" is already included in that paragraph. Oh, yes, sorry, I was looking at the old sources. >>> That should be rephrased then, to document the new behaviour. >>> Has someone with the relevant knowledge a small proposal for this? >>> (I'm lacking knowledge here, sorry.) >> >> The trouble is, systemd has essentially deprecated all the advice >> given in this section. Mind you, I don't really understand why the >> FAQ was explaining it, since it's in no way specific to Debian or even >> Linux. > > So maybe completely drop that question... It's approaching obsolescence, but at least the "adduser" invocation is Debian-specific. >> The questions seem to me to be, very roughly: >> >> Q) How do I install Debian? >> A) Easy: get an appropriate form of Debian-Installer image, put it on >> a CD or USB thumbdrive, and boot off that to start the install >> process. >> >> Q) What do you mean by "appropriate"? >> A) That's where it gets complicated. See https://get.debian.org! ^ (Oops! I mean http://, though the page it redirects to is https://) > This page starts with something like "information about installing > Debian can be found in the Debian installation guide". > So we could assume, that information available in the above guide > is not needed here. Or something like that. > > Moreover, I fear that we have to refuse most of the old content in the > Debian FAQ, if we aim to set standards at a too high level ... Yes, okay. As long as we get rid of the floppy disk references, that should be enough of an improvement for now. But I would suggest a couple of tweaks to the section headers: -<sect id="boot-floppies">Where/how can I get the Debian installation disks? +<sect id="inst-disks">Where/how can I get the Debian installation disks? (A "boot disk" is one that just has something like grub on it) -<sect id="cdrom">How do I install the Debian from CD-ROMs? +<sect id="cdrom">How do I install Debian from CD-ROMs? (Grammar fix.) >>>>> Index: uptodate.sgml [...] >> There are still a few "advanced" uses that require the old utilities >> (apt-get source, apt-cache madison), but in general, yes. This may >> require some rephrasing to keep it clear whether we mean apt the >> binary, apt the package, or apt the holy^W infrastructure. > > So, the "apt" binary is just a wrapper, which calls the "original" > commands like "apt-get install foo"? It's a separate binary that makes use of the same libapt functions, just with slightly fine-tuned configuration defaults. But the effect is very like having some sort of wrapper around apt-get/apt-cache. > Yes, that makes sense. > But makes it more difficult to clearly document it ... as you said above > (apt the binary, apt the package, apt the whole infrastructure). In the long term installing "apt" to get the command "apt" is simpler, but it'll take a while for the old docs to stop confusing people! -- JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
