Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 16:45:26 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu> To: "Mr. M" <mistrM@gtemail.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Amusing: LinuxCountry site runs on FreeBSD :) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9906161636160.26305-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu> In-Reply-To: <000c01beb83b$f0d7ac40$982b20d8@MM.compulsiv.com>
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Hi,
On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Mr. M wrote:
> I came from a DOS/Windoze world to Linux and now FreeBSD. Too put it
> bluntly the lack of decent documentation for FreeBSD is what is
> keeping people away. Other than the seriously ancient book from
> Walnut Creek and the Manual on freebsd.org there is nothing out there.
I assume you mean "The Complete FreeBSD" - there's a new version available
now and the last version was for 2.2.8 (? I think ?).
> There are so many resources for Linux users it's not funny. I can't
> believe how many books are on the shelf at my local bookstore. I
> swear I thought I saw "The Joy of Linux Sex" and "Martha Stewart's
> Linux Living"! <jk>
> Where is "Running FreeBSD" from O'Reilly? How about another 70lb book
> from SAMS called "FreeBSD Unleased"?
The reason there are a plethora of Linux books is because publishers know
anything with Linux, even "The Joy of Linux Sex", will sell. Are the
majority of those books useful? -shrug- My advisor for my PhD bought
Unix Unleashed a few years ago - he's never touched it to my knowledge.
The reason there are so few FreeBSD books:
1) because FreeBSD is derived from 4.4-BSD, any book on a BSD
Unix will apply (for most situations)
2) because FreeBSD is typically used by experienced sys admins
whereas Linux has (or had originally) the college hacker;
the experienced admins already have books on BSD style unix
3) no one, but Greg Lehey has written one; Greg has asked (if
I recall a thread from maybe 2 years ago) O'Reilly if they'd
be interested and they said no
> If you want to see FreeBSD become more popular you have to make more
> resources available to people so it will be much easier for them to
> learn.
I started from scratch w/ 2.1.7 and I've been running it since then. Yes,
the learning curve was steep, but frankly the -questions mailing list and
the Handbook were enough for me to figure out how to get things working
right. Any other info I needed was from man pages or Unix for the
Impatient.
If you want more docs/books, help write them. I'm sure that FreeBSD-zine
would be happy to receive info/tutorials as would Daemon News (I'm a
co-editor).
Brett
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Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu *
brett@daemonnews.org *
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http://www.daemonnews.org/ *
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