Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 00:09:17 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Sue Blake" <sue@welearn.com.au>, "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "Kathy Quinlan" <katinka@magestower.com>, "N6REJ" <n6rej@tcsn.net>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: I'm leaving Message-ID: <006201c0dc44$ca69ebc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010514084709.A68348@welearn.com.au>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Sue Blake >Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2001 3:47 PM >To: Rahul Siddharthan >Cc: Kathy Quinlan; N6REJ; freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG; >freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: I'm leaving > > >On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 12:26:23PM +0200, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >> >> Often you can find the answers in the docs if you know where to look. > >And that is exactly the problem faced by many newbies: not knowing >where to look, nor realising they're there when they've found it. They >can't tell because there are concepts that they don't have, and when >they look at the documentation they might find vaguely familiar words >which are not used in every day speech and which have a particular >meaning to people with a formal computer education. > This is exactly why I wrote my book The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide - to hand-hold the people coming in from a Windows environment to a FreeBSD environment, who have a grasp of the terminology used in Windows. (and which is teriffically damaging as Microsoft has been on a 20-year campaign to doublespeak the entire industry. Just to give you an example I had to spend 3 pages explaining that there IS a difference between the word "Domain" used in Microsoft Windows networking, and used everywhere else.) >The man pages do this a lot. For example, in ls(1) we have a few words >that probably won't be understood without unix knowledge, and I have >no problem with that. Words like "FIFO", "symbolic link", etc >need to be looked up in a unix text somewhere and learned. Until No - these are not "UNIX" words in particular, they are general computer science terms. >then, you are not so likely to need the relatively more advanced stuff >that they are found in. Part of the deal is learning about these things. > >What really stumps people is when, reading in that partially familiar >environment, they must stop and try to figure out more common sounding >words like: > >lexicographical order >reursively >whiteouts >deprecated >colon-delimited > >With these, once you've seen them in a unix context they're obvious, >but they don't have instant meaning that leaps out for a beginner. > >Some man pages restate these in more common words or show very >easy examples where their meanings are apparent. Our man pages >for the common user and setup commands could be improved by a >going-over with this perspective in mind, perhaps referring to >others such as the Tru64 man pages for ideas. In other documents, >such as the Handbook, we could use something like a newbie review >team to make sure that unnecessary difficulties don't creep >in or they are linked to explanations or a glossary. > >That'd be lot of work. Meanwhile we have to be more aware of >the nature of their difficulties. > That is a good idea, any writing can be helped by conciseness. Not only adding examples but how many man pages have things that are frankly wrong in them I wonder? But, it doesen't really address the fundamental problem your talking about with newbies - it is that there's a basic paradigm that has to be used to approach UNIX. People who have come at it with only Windows experience are coming from a paradigm that in recent years has been designed to give it's users as little information about how things _really_work_ as opposed to how _microsoft_windows_ works. Your talking about a company that would happily replace all instances of FIFO in it's documentation with WSIB then allude as how this is short for "Windows Sequential Inline Buffer" and make no mention of FIFO anywhere, if they thought it would gain them a competitive advantage. They have been doing this with Internet technologies since they got into it, and people that only have been raised on this diet have an incredibly f&*k up understanding of ordinary Internet terms, which makes it hard to wean them off Windows. >> But I find that most people (even intelligent, computer-literate >> people) get intimidated by it, even though it works well and the ports >> system etc are appealing. These people have problems with the chaotic >> nature of linux distributions: but for some reason they find it too >> difficult to adjust to the FreeBSD mindset, even when it's >> demonstrated to them that you can easily do with FreeBSD just about >> anything you can do with Linux. > >Yep. There might only be one or two things that are hard to understand, >but they are presented in such a foreign and frighteneing environment >that suddenly nothing makes sense and it's not clear exactly where >the problem is. Then asking questions about it is real tricky. > No, they aren't presented in a "foreign" environment, they are presented in the "normal" environment - the problem is that the windows-only admin has been fed goat cheese for so long they don't understand that normal cheese isn't supposed to stink. >> Would it be a good idea to have a "default GUI install" as one of the >> install options, which sets up either KDE or GNOME, and a web browser, >> and desktop icons for the HTML-ised version of the FreeBSD handbook? >> Then when the user logs in and wants to learn more about the system, >> there's no need to poke around in /usr/share/doc (many people don't >> seem to realise it exists, until it's pointed out to them): they can >> just click and read. Some sort of tweak could be made to the >> KDE/GNOME help browsers to include the basic FreeBSD stuff there too. > >While that would be great, the person in this case was having >trouble getting his head around what was required to install, >a problem that exceeded what he had managed to extract from the >docs. But, he didn't look at all the docs that are out there, don't you see? This isn't a problem with a falling down of the FreeBSD docs. The problem is that we have here a user that isn't committed enough to spend the 3 hours to walk into a bookstore, and pick up a piece of documentation (ie: my book) that _would_ help him, and read it and see for himself that it _would_ help him and buy it!!! He's probably never even touched a Linux book either although the technical bookstores are stuffed with them!!! But, I'll bet that he as spent at least $500 on Windows books. >I include part of his -questions post below as an example. >I can't figure out what he wants, but I can tell that he's really >thinking and applying himself to solving the problem. His previously >good conceptual tools have let him down and diligent reading of the >docs has't saved him. > Well, I have no sympathy as at least FreeBSD _supplies_ docs _for free_ on the website - that's far better than what you get when you buy a copy of Windows, there's no docs supplied at all! >On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 11:36:23PM -0700, N6REJ wrote: ><snip> >> the major thing I'm not too sure about is whether I should tell >it I want it >> to put things in the boot partition or not, and then wether I >need to make >> drive c "bootable" or not. I mean I know it needs to be for >dos, and it is >> currently of course, but FBSD does'nt seem to recognize that fact. I >> thought I had it done right this morning but after I powered down it said >> bad partition. >> I want c: drive to be accesible as /c and d: as /d: ( ESPECIALLY >D: ) which >> are both FAT32 so that I can easily retrieve files I have stored >there and >> put somethere 2 if I choose too. > >What you see above is a person coming to FreeBSD with some decent >working knowledge of his old environment, applying those concepts >that he has already to try to understand what's required for >installing FreeBSD. It's useless to tell him to forget his old OS, >because at his point there is no way to tell which concepts are >microsoftisms and which are not. No way. We who know more than he >have to meet him in the middle until we have a common language. >Because we can. > We already have by supplying free docs within FreeBSD, the caliber that aren't anywhere near the free ones supplied with any Windows installation. We alreay have by supplying books that cost money, and that sell for cheaper than any serious Windows book does, books that go in depth into this sort of problem. I have a whole part of a chapter devoted to clearing away all this inconsistent rubbish dos/windowisims terminology he is using on filesystems. >> I really don't think it's so difficult to use FreeBSD if you read the >> docs, but many people don't realise just how good the docs are... > >Heartily agreed. But it depends so much on where you're coming from. > >I raise again the old example doc >http://www.welearn.com.au/freebsd/slow/ready.html >People say this summary is very harsh, and I agree, but nobody can point >to parts of it and agree that that knowledge is _not_ a preprequisite. > >There is no path to success without a clear starting point. >We need to rethink: > > Exactly what are we expecting newcomers to know, and I don't agree with this at all. I think that your not going to be able to gain consensus in The FreeBSD Community as to what a _detailed_ set of expectations are. Certainly, YOU can propose a _general_ set of expectations, and probably get a majority to sign off on it, but a general set of expectations is not an exact set. Once you start getting detailed enough for it to be an exact set, your not going to get a majority consensus. > why can't we state those expectations clearly? > I think that most people in The FreeBSD Community that have a specific set of expectations for what a newbie should know, can in fact, state them pretty clearly. But, I also think that the majority of people that got into FreeBSD didn't do it through a regimented training program, but rather by ploughing on through, and as such don't really care about such things. In short, it's the argument "I had to work and sweat my way to understanding and I made it, so if your complaining to me about how hard it is, then I'm not that sympathetic." Just because this argument isn't Politically Correct, doesen't make it wrong. Fortunately, there are some people (like myself) who once we have ploughed on through, we are willing to reach a hand back and pull some newbies along a broken trail. But, if it's Newbie Expectations that you want', well here's mine: Guide to Proper Newbie Expectations to have before running FreeBSD The following is a bit of a guide that I wrote up which should be read by anyone who thinks they want to run FreeBSD. These are what I would call "The FreeBSD Community's minimum expectations for you" if there was such a thing and they had expectations. Happily, there's not, but it may help you to pretend that there is so this is why these are here. Use at your own risk! 1) We didn't write FreeBSD to make things easy for YOU! We wrote FreeBSD to make things easy for US! What this basically means is that if you need to do computational things that are similar to the computational things we need to do, then FreeBSD will probably makes things easier for you. But, if your needs aren't our needs, then there's less liklihood that it will make a difference if you learn FreeBSD or not. 2) We don't (in general) make money off of your use of FreeBSD. I know this is amazing, but there is no secret way that advertising revenue is making us all millionaires. You see, all the IPO activity and the dot-commers that were active in the year 2000 pretty much killed it for us - the Linux people were able to manufacture a bunch of paper companies and make millions of dollars from ignorant investors, but we never got around to doing this with FreeBSD before Wall Street wised up. Like someone else said, FreeBSD users make money the "eld fasoned waye - waee EARN it" What this means is that our interest in seeing you with a successful FreeBSD installation is that of fans at a sports game - we will happily cheer you on if you win, but if you lose, we really don't feel that we owe you a consolation prize. 3) We think it's unfair if you aren't willing to spend the same money on hardware you use for FreeBSD, as on hardware for That Other Operating System. We think it was sometime in 1996 that a newbie actually signed on and said "Hey, guys, I want to run FreeBSD and _I_DON'T_HAVE_A_MACHINE_YET_ and _WHAT_SHOULD_I_BUY?_ We still treasure that moment with a warm spot in our hearts. Meanwhile, understand that just like you would never go buy a WANic405 for use under Windows 95, because Windows 95 drivers don't exist for it, we would never go buy a _insert-usb-mouse-parallel-port-tapedrive-floppy-controller-vibrator-here_ for use with FreeBSD because FreeBSD drivers don't exist for it. We ALSO wouldn't expect to take that running FreeBSD system with a WANic405 in it and convert it to run under Windows 95 and we don't think you should expect to take that running Windows 95 system with a PCTel Winmodem in it and convert it to run under FreeBSD. 4) We feel it's reasonable to expect 2 weeks of your time understanding FreeBSD. Of course, we mean the SAME kind of time that you would spend if your boss would give you 2 weeks for a project, ie: 80 hours. We feel that 80 hours can easily be divided up over a month's time of 3 hours every evening getting to know FreeBSD. We figure that if you have prior computer experience and you've spent 3 hours every evening attempting to install FreeBSD for a month, then that's pretty reasonable for a brand new operating system you've never seen before, and you will have a running system out of it. 5) We expect that if your going to make unfavorable comparisons between FreeBSD and other operating systems, that you are going to know FreeBSD front, back, up, down, and sideways. In short, newbies that make a lot of "Well, linnnuuxx has THIS and FreeBSD is so LAME for not having it" kinds of remarks basically succeed in making themselves look like idiots. 6) We expect that your not going to be foolish enough to install an operating system you know nothing about, and have no prior experience on particular hardware with, onto a production system that has data on it you want to keep. In short, a newbie installing FreeBSD onto a multiboot system with 4 different copies of Windows on it that can be selected by some convenient boot program, is a newbie that is about to permanently lose all his data. Look, can't you go down to the back loading dock of Intel and dig out an old 4GB IDE disk from their dumpster or something then use that for your first FreeBSD installation? Seriously, if your not even willing to spend that much money to safeguard your data, then don't come running to us when you chop your foot off. You can get beautiful, 3 year old, server-quality Pentiums for a few hundred bucks from Ebay and use them for test systems, then once you understand what your doing, you can try farting around with multiboot. 7) We expect that your not under some artificial time limit to have a running FreeBSD system up. Like the saying goes, Your Lack Of Prepardness Is Not Our Emergency. If you boss just came to you and told you to get a FreeBSD system up and running in 2 weeks, and you've never seen a FreeBSD system before, well then there's a lot of jobs out there looking for people, we are sure you can find something in 2 weeks. Seriously, trying to learn something under pressure is not the way to do things. There's companies that sell prebuilt FreeBSD servers if you really are in this situation. 8) Finally, and most importantly, we expect that you have a CLEAR IDEA of what kind of problem your going to solve by setting up FreeBSD, and that your POSITIVE that setting up FreeBSD is going to solve it. Since by definition (since you haven't set up FreeBSD before) you shouldn't know if FreeBSD really will solve the problem or not, an excellent way to find out before spending the trouble is to ask us. And, please don't waste our time asking if FreeBSD is going to do this or do that - you got a problem, by Gawd spit it out, boy! If you need to know if FreeBSD will act as a fileserver for both UNIX and Windows clients, by golly spit that out - don't start by making a bunch of assumptions about HOW FreeBSD is going to do this and then start beating around the bush asking Will FreeBSD support ACL's over Appleytalk with Macintosh clients, leaving us to sit there attempting to guess what in Sam Hill your actually trying to accomplish! Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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