[aklug] Re: Basic Linux information

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, larry collier wrote:

> Arthur, when you 'read the manual' you understand what it means. When I
> read the manual, mostly, I get the feeling it's written in some foreign
> language. I've been doing this a long time, and yes I'm basically a
> user. I'm neither geek nor hacker and aspire to neither one. But I'm
> way above average mentally and have a hell of a time understanding most
> of the man pages out there.
>
> Todays linux is not the one you started with. I started with rh4.1.
> It fit on one CD and didn't fill that. The latest from rh, fills a dvd
> and is missing a lot of stuff a home user will want. There is a huge
> difference between starting out back then and starting now.
>
> Wanting a new user to read the manual, which isn't comprehensible until
> you've read about a thousand of them will surely stop just about all new
> users. Without new users linux is doomed. I'd rather have something
> they can use right away because, BS aside, for most people Windows works
> out of the box tolerably well. And of course most people never install it.
>
> We have something better, but our attitude (and totally crap
> documentation) will doom it.

While I'm diametrically opposed to Jon's stance, he did ask the right
question: what is our goal? Personally, my goal would be to engender a
culture where people are encouraged to take things apart, to learn the
internals, and to build new stuff based on them. In my mind, nothing less
will ensure that Linux continues to flourish rather than stagnate and die.

If, on the other hand, our goal is just to "package" stuff up for a populace
that largely doesn't give a damn how it works or what the potential for
growth is, then you'd be right. We should be a user-oriented group, but
with the clear expectation that what we're using *will* become obsolete and
stagnant. And we should accept that many of our users will ultimately end
up on OSX anyway. Because without a profit motive, there's no incentive to
fully document, round out functionality, clean up presentation, etc.

I fully admit, I'm part of the problem. I sling code, but like most open
source developers, I do it for myself. That means that as soon as it works
the way I want it to, I'm done. And user documentation is an afterthought.
I write man pages, but they're intended to be *references*, not tutorials.

What frustrates me, however, is how insistent many so-called geeks are in
refusing to understand the problem. I first installed Slackware in '95 off
of floppies. Yes, there's a lot more software in today's distros, but the
core operating principles of UNIX software is still there. Somehow, I
manage to get by being able to extrapolate from the fundamentals how the new
stuff should work. I'm not always right, but I'm still functionally
literate and effective.

And that's the whole point: if we were more concerned about learning core
computing architecture we'd be much less concerned about specific
applications. You can extrapolate with a more than fair amount of accuracy
just from that.

And this is where I differ with Marc. He thinks we just need to put Linux
into the hands of kids. If we really want these kids to learn *technology*,
and not little applications, then we put a Heath Kit CPM computer in front
of them -- in the original parts baggies -- and make them solder it together
from scratch. If we gave the kids Ubuntu instead, we'd just have the same
class of Windows users that we have now, only with an anti-MS slant.

There's a reason why I keep my old Et3400 microcomputer breadboard trainer
around. If any of my offspring show any interest in computing as a career,
they're going to learn the old way, from the bottom up.

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Wed Sep 16 15:31:46 2009