Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 00:07:20 -0400 (EDT) From: jan@bagend.atl.ga.us (Jan Isley) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hackers) Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Doc) Subject: Re: Dc_Users Group Meeting Message-ID: <m0sXhSj-0004pHC@bagend.atl.ga.us> In-Reply-To: <5476.805148822@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jul 7, 95 01:27:02 pm
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > - Improving documentation ... deletia ... This would be
> > directed at first time users and the corperate market.
> Yes! I was just discussing this as one of my primary goals for 2.1,
> in fact. If one reads the newsgroups for any length of time, in fact,
> it becomes quickly and distressingly apparent that people are still
> very much confused by some of our "highly assumptive" documentation.
> We're still not taking it well into account that most users are LAZY
> SCHMUCKS WHO WOULDN'T READ A MANUAL IF YOU WHAPPED THEM UPSIDE THE
> HEAD WITH IT! I MEAN, I MEAN, *SLAP*. Uh. Thanks, I needed that.
> Sorry to rave, and what I meant to say was that given that most users
> aren't going to wade through lots of doc, the goal shouldn't be to
> generate *more* doc so much as to generate *better* doc.
that' a lot to quote, but what to leave out ?
Yes, yes, yes, and it is not all the average schmucks' fault. The
closest, decent computer book store to me by 20 miles is Microcenter.
There are at *least* 50 very thick, 19.95 or less, System V books on
their shelf, if not more, lots more. They have about a dozen Linux
books on the shelf. And they have 3 BSD books. Two are way old, and
they all cost over $50. Make that extra 20 mile drive and you can
find 5 or 6 more books on BSD, none of them complete enough to not
need to buy the whole set, there goes $200 bucks, give or take $50.
So the average DOS dude has not bought these books, has he? Heck,
he can buy a Linux book for $25 AND IT COMES WITH A CD OR TWO! Maybe
where you live they have better, cheaper books, but not here they
don't. I have sysv books out the wazoo, but I thought it was time
to learn BSD. I needed to get anything on this system except Linux
so I turned to FreeBSD. Sounds good, doesn't it? FreeBSD. None
of the books that I have collected over that last 10 years are any
help at all starting BSD from scratch.
There ARE some extremely helpful folk associated with FreeBSD. You
have to wonder though... I have said RTFM plenty of times myself,
but often when someone gets RTFM around here, TFM they mean is way
down the source tree some where, not the man page.
This is not just a bitch session folks. I am trying to help. I am
unfortunately, one of those BSD ignorant schmucks. If FreeBSD is to
"gain market share" in a market dominated by sysv-isms, the documents
need to improve or the newbies will stay away in droves.
> By "better" I mean documentation that presents more of the crucial
> stuff up-front, takes care to explain its terms early so that people
> don't have to read 4 pages in to see that by "FAQ" we meant
> /usr/share/FAQ/blah/blah and (and this is most important) actually
> tries to be self-consistent with documentation conventions and
> explaining things in the proper order. Our docs are riddled with
> bogons like referring to the FAQ as "The FreeBSD FAQ" in one
This is very important. You guys have no idea how important. You
have all been working on this for years and things that are obvious
and unimportant to you may be the things that sends newbies running
back to Linux, even the ones that tried to RTFM first.
And it sure needs to be better than most of what I have seen in the
Linux how-to world. No wonder newbies don't read those how-to's!
Like, many of them are LINUX RULZ D00D, who cares if they are correct.
> When a user sees something in our own docs
> that's plainly wrong for the release they're now using, it hardly
> inspires confidence that we didn't even care enough about it to even
> update it! :-(
I wonder how many sales Diamond has lost over bogons in Linux X docs.
How many they will still be losing a year from now ...
> > - The creation and support of turnkey systems for users. This would
> > be directed at a certian use such as routing, firewall, and Internet
> > connectivity.
>
> You must be a mind-reader - I was just talking to some folks about
> just such a system the other day.. I had envisioned some Tk based
> interface that let you configure your machine as anything from a
> router to a firewall to a corporate mail server, just by clicking the
> relevant buttons and typing the right information when it popped up in
> your face and asked for it. Such a system wouldn't take more than 6
...
> machine. If we could offer a more server oriented "Internet in a box"
> equivalent to such people, it would be a terrific boon.
...
> Lest we forget, Internet servers are also hardly the only turnkey apps
> around. Long before we came on the scene, SCO was selling into
> warehouse inventory control systems and point-of-sales apps (next time
> you go to the movie theater, you may be amused to know that the screen
> the sales clerk is typing on goes to a SCO box in the back) and all of
> these are ripe and fertile ground for FreeBSD, if only someone would
> jump in and write the business side.
This same market helped NCR stay in business for years.
And not for the last time am I going to say this. The biggest market
out there is not webb servers, it is not video rental stores, it is
the average schmuck at home, just like me, no networking, just a modem.
I hear you laughing... don't. FreeBSD may have networking that walks
on water and gives change. Most Joe Schmucks will never know anything
about networking. The Joe Schmucks of the world are the ones who buy
most of the computers.
I *am* very impressed with FreeBSD. I have not managed to get it up
and running good enough to shut down Linux, but I *am* very impressed
with it!
This was posted to hackers. Your average mail user agent does not
have a followup-to header. :) I guess this belongs to doc or dev/null.
--
Jan Isley Heroes have the shelf life of cottage cheese,
jan@bagend.atl.ga.us and public memory is shorter than Dudley Moore.
-- Rheta Grimsley Johnson
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