Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:07:38 +0000 (GMT) From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> To: Rusty <irisinc@gci.net> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Elementary documentation Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9908270956410.6392-100000@fw.wintelcom.net> In-Reply-To: <37C65D04.2D8443C5@gci.net>
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On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Rusty wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm teaching my eleven (11) year old son how to use Freebsd. I have a
> 400 MgH box and his is 330 MgH machine. I recently built a 300 MgH box
> to use as a gateway and a router. I have a 40 mg SuSE 6.1 hack that
> will do service as a firewall and router.
>
> My question is; where may I find documentation that is simple enough for
> an above average 11 year old to understand? An example: Tonight we
> were compiling some games (what else?) that he had downloaded and he
> inquired about the meaning of the arguments following the commands
> "gunzip" and "tar". He wanted to know what each stood for. I'm not
> about to reefer an eleven year old to a man page, I don't do that to
> anyone I like.
No no no... get them started on man pages early, give a man a fish and
he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll never go hungry.
(please excuse if i butchered that)
Helping oneself by reading man pages and then experimenting is the best
way to learn.
> We consulted one of the many three inch thick books on
> Unix I have purchased from time to time and I was able to give him the
> correct answer. Giving a newbie a good, informative answer is important
> if you want that person to be properly grounded in the discipline they
> are studying. Learning the basics well makes the rest of the study
> easy.
>
> If anyone has some recommendations as to where I may purchase
> documentation that will fit my requirements I will be most appreciative.
As far as I know most of the "why does unix do it this way?" answers
are passed down to the next generation of hackers by word of mouth,
it's an oral history.
In so far as your tar question:
c - compress
x - extract
z - zip
f - file
t - test
v - view
tar xzvf mytarball.tgz
|\\_______________________
| \_______ \
| \ \
extract this zipped tarball and show me the files as you uncompress it.
Then there are options and programs that make abosolutely no sense
in that way, you just sort of get used to and enjoy it. An example,
the program 'biff' that watches your mailbox and pops up a message
on your terminal when you have new mail, it is named after the dog
that its author owned.
good luck,
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@rush.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
Wintelcom systems administrator and programmer
- http://www.wintelcom.net/ [bright@wintelcom.net]
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