Date: Sun, 30 Nov 97 14:53:04 From: "Francisco Reyes" <reyesf@super.zippo.com> To: "FreeBSD Doc Mailing List." <doc@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "amora@zoom.es" <amora@zoom.es> Subject: New user friendly documentation was (Where's FreeBSD 2.2.5 's FAQ and Handbook?) Message-ID: <199711301951.LAA04072@super.zippo.com>
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Moved to doc. >What I'm trying to >express is my own experience with newcomers to the Un*x world when >they face the decision to install a Unix-like system. For some reason >they find more impressive the documentation that comes with Linux >distributions. I agree FreeBSD could use more documentation for totally new Unix and FreeBSD users. For instance when I got my first FreeBSD CDs some time back I had no clue what the "Live filesystem" CD was for. There was no explanation in the booklet. Now that I got 2.2.5 I did not see any explanation of what the 3rd and 4th CDs were for or how to use them. After looking at them and asking in the list I found out, but I think that to a new user it would confusing to find "ports" on the "Docs and Extra Utilities". Ports are not documentation, plus they may not know what a "port" is anyway. I think we just need more people involved in the documentation project and try to have more focus on making the documentation friendlier to new users. I once tried to help with documentation and could not get through the SGML. FreeBSD is a hobby for me (i.e. nothing job related depends on it) so I had not had the time to get more involved. Recently I had some days off and got many things working including CVSup. Been able to have the entire Handbook and FAQ SGML code helps a lot and I feel that at the very least now I will be able to make changing to existing pages without still having a good understanding of SGML. I have never tried Linux. Could you comment on what in the Linux distributions documentation you saw which makes you consider they are better than FreeBSD's? How do you suggest we change our docs?
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