On Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 03:01:09PM -0500, Brian Nelson wrote: > On Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 11:10:50AM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: > > I'll dispute (mildly) the "it's by design" and "we like it that way". I > > think part of the issue with GNU/Linux / Unix is that it sort of > > happened that way -- with some guiding principles. But it's not crafted > > or designed so much as evolved. And it would be preferable to have a > > gentler introductory curve. > > Well, I would argue that configurability and flexibility are inversely > proportional to easy of learning. The more options you have and > different ways of accomplishing the same thing, the more you have to > learn. And since we love the configurability and flexibility of > linux, we are willing to accept a taller learning curve. I believe it > is possible to make the slope gentler, but it is very hard to do > without making the hill shorter.
aha! you can also gentle-ify the slope by making the hill WIDER. if the debian.org team had a documentation-supervisor task force to run eyeballs over the docs to try to compare existing manpages & such with actual running software -- and update to match, before a major release -- i'd think it would be WONDERFUL. now how can we trick some wordsmith people into wanting to do that? > I should have said "newbie documentation". I agree that once you've > become familiar with Debian, it's very easy to find the documentation > you're looking for. With the archives of this list, and all the > additional non-Debian-specific documentation, there's a plethora of > documentation out there. > > However, these resources aren't particularly obvious for a newbie. > Just looking at the documentation section of debian.org alone isn't > very helpful. > > I can be fairly subjective about this because I've only been using > Debian for about a month, and my Debian newbie experiences are fresh > in my mind. I found initially that I had a bitch of a time finding > the answers to my questions. I always did find the answers, but it > was a struggle. have you written a 'finding this-n-that on debian: a newbie howto' yet? > > Again, most of the Debian defaults are pretty sane. I tend to roll > > stuff out and have it work. Though reading docs is useful, some > > packages require configuration. And yes, you have to be there for it. > > Yep, but you're not new to Debian. You know too much. ;) If you are > new to it, it is quite difficult. -- don't visit this page. it's bad for you. take my expert word for it. http://www.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2001/03/21/spring/index1.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sourceforge.net/projects/newbiedoc -- we need your brain! http://www.dontUthink.com/ -- your brain needs us!
