Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 17:18:45 -0600 (CST) From: Brennan Stehling <brennan@offwhite.net> To: Doug Young <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> Cc: kstewart@urx.com, "Kruppa, Peter Ulrich" <root@pukruppa.de>, Bill Schoolcraft <bill@wiliweld.com>, Eric Colburn <ecolburn@seeitfirst.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 4.3 FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0103211711530.45058-100000@home.offwhite.net> In-Reply-To: <050a01c0b258$c0e0d480$8300a8c0@apana.org.au>
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I would agree that the docs are hard to understand but if you stick with
it they eventually start to make sense. And that does not apply justing
to maintaining FreeBSD. Try learning C or Java or how to install OpenSSL
without the ports collection.
First thing you need to do is learn the terminology. The hardest part is
not knowing enough to ask a good question to either pose to a mailing list
or to act on yourself by hunting down the information through man pages,
mailing list archives or web searches.
And keep in mind that if you do want to install the latest release the
week it comes out you will be on the cutting edge and that is where there
is the least documentation. It is best to lag behind the releases by a
few months so that you can learn from other people's problems and then
upgrade to the STABLE branch just as soon as you get the new RELEASE. You
will save yourself a lot of headaches.
Seymore Cray, the guy who created the Cray Supercomputer, always lagged
behind the cutting edge technology so that he could learn from other
people's mistakes and not waste his own time. Ultimately he always made
the better product. He is a great man to emulate. Find a book on him if
you would like to make your life better. He was a very smart person.
Brennan Stehling - software developer and system administrator
my projects:
home.offwhite.net (free personal hosting)
www.greasydaemon.com (bsd search)
On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Doug Young wrote:
> > I haven't found the cvsup route a problem. Most of the problems have
> > been by people that didn't follow instructions. For example, the
> > Handbook (19.4.1) tells you to above all else pay attention to
> > /usr/src/UPDATING and Warner tells you to look at an archive of the
> > last two weeks of email from -stable before you do anything else.
> > Somewhere in there we have a literacy problem or a doesn't apply to
> me
> > attitude.
>
> I'm certain the main reason many people don't read stuff is that like
> me they
> never did learn to speak martian. After a number of attempts to
> decipher
> unintelligible documentation one tends not to bother with it again. In
> the case
> of CVSUP at least, some "step_by_step" explanations have appeared at
> the
> user-friendly sites, so just maybe those of us who don't read martian
> might
> be able to make sense of it. Stuff about special scripts etc goes way
> (& same probably applies to 50% of people lurking here) .... which is
> exactly why
> people keep clamouring for "step by step" explanations. Sure its easy
> to tell
> everyone with a question to RTFM / read O'Reilly / etc, neglecting to
> consider
> that "TFM" is totally unintelligible & O'Reilly books cost a days wage
> for many.
>
>
>
>
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