Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 12:10:50 -0400 From: "SILVER, MICHAEL A" <MSILVER@scana.com> To: "'freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "'Doug Young'" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> Subject: RE: new books, changing my pt. of view Message-ID: <DBB3921EFE2AD211A81500A0C9B5FE760579452C@msg04.scana.com>
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I couldn't agree more. >My point was / is that there's nothing wrong with the reliability of FreeBSD, >however its badly lacking in usable "how to get blah working in 5 steps" >type documentation. If that issue could be properly resolved it would certainly >challenge Solaris / SCO etc The manual & Complete FreeBSD still lack a >heap of the essential details needed to get stuff working quickly .... to get >something unfamiliar working one has to read disjointed bits of this & bits of >that, attempt to piece the lot together so its halfway intelligible, then >post heaps of questions to the list and hope someone has been down the exact >same road recently and remembers how to solve the issue. That's maybe OK >for hackers with unlimited resources of time, but its not practical for businesses >who just need the thing working yesterday. You have hit the nail on the head. I have heard profressional UNIX programmers complain about this same thing. I wonder if this gap could not be filled by a well designed web site. Basically a 'What is' and 'How to' database. For example, if you wanted to set up a firewall, search for 'firewall', and a list of the available packages would be displayed with detailed layman descriptions of each with advantages and disadvantages, home web sites, and most importantly, step by step setup instructions and maybe some troubleshooting guidliness pulled from past messages. This would help 1) in finding the appropriate package for a given situation, and 2) in setting it up, which is always the hardest part. The instructions would have to written to the lowest common denomenator (like me). Let me know what you think about this. Perhaps it already exists??? If not, it may be time for us 'newbies' to step up to the plate. ...Michael... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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