Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 11:27:13 +0000 (GMT) From: Andrew McKay <andy@openirc.co.uk> To: Hiten Pandya <hitmaster2k@yahoo.com> Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [SUGGESTION] - A linuxdoc section Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0112181101130.6429-100000@fluoxetine.lan> In-Reply-To: <20011218065002.79536.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Hiten Pandya wrote: HP> do you think it would be good if we had a section on HP> the 'docs' page for linuxdoc based documents which HP> could be used with FreeBSD. (assuming this sentence to be a question) No, I don't. The problem with providing linux documentation is that the linux userland is somewhat different, and increasingly so, from the FreeBSD userland. There is clearly a lot of linux documentation which will work verbatim with FreeBSD but by far the majority of it is either subtly or completely different. This is not a problem for experienced users who understand the differences but for new users this is likely to increase confusion when something doesn't work exactly as advertised. Increased confusion leads to increased frustration which leads to increased mailing list traffic and increased abandonment. (It's sad to see that so many people playing around with linux and FreeBSD have absolutely no clue what they are doing. I know of one linux user who was easily convinced, by someone who shall remain nameless, to dd blank data over the first few blocks of his hard drive thus rendering his system unbootable.) On a purist note, FreeBSD needs to be seen to be different from (and better than) linux in all the areas where it is. If we are providing linux documentation it blurs the distinction and makes the arguments for switching from linux to FreeBSD appear weaker. I have no objection to pointing out to people that in some cases linux documentation may be helpful when trying to configure various things. I also have no objection to using more links to HowTOs, from articles and the like, where the author of the FreeBSD documentation knows that the HowTO will likely be helpful. I don't think, however, that providing them as part of the FreeBSD documentation is a good idea from any point of view. There are three ways to approach this problem, in order of increasing difficulty: 1) Ignore 2) Link 3) Create From a personal point of view I would prefer that useful linux documentation be 'ported' (re-written by someone who understands the subject well) to FreeBSD but linking where appropriate is also a good idea. Incidentally, is the PPPPP so bad that we need to link to the linux ppp HowTO? If it is then this needs fixed pretty rapidly. -- Andrew McKay <andy@openirc.co.uk> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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