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Education Software Linux

The Linux Documentation Project Turns 10 232

Posted by Cliff from the happy-anniversary dept.
hta writes: "The Linux Documentation Project is happy to announce its 10-year anniversary! Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation. Matt Welsh decided to do something about this, and wrote the first Linux HOWTO - the 'Installation HOWTO' - the first of what is now a huge collection of focused, solution-oriented documents. It became a movement just like Linux itself. More and more people joined in on the effort, tools were created, and documents were written, translated and published. Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly."

"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.

TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.

TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."
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The Linux Documentation Project Turns 10

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  • ...where it is. So here's a link [tldp.org].

    Whilst this is obviously a monumental community feat, and I would like to offer my thanks to all those who have contributed over the years, I feel it is sadly lacking howtos for ablution and girlfriend. Oh, and a securing-windows one for Bill too. Happy Birthday LDP!

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:24PM (#7361957)
    The RTFM expression turns 10 too!

  • finally... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:24PM (#7361960)
    now maybe it will stop wetting the bed.

  • and now we have.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by joeldg ( 518249 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:26PM (#7361982) Homepage
    ten years later..
    the gentoo forums..

    probably the best place to find a fanatical how-to on anything..

    by fanatics, for fanatics :)

    (we are all a little fanatical here)

    • probably the best place to find a fanatical how-to on anything..

      ...it's hosted off a cave in Afghanistan.

      And in fear of a horde of fanatics coming after me, IT WAS A JOKE ;).

      Kjella
      • Allee Bak Gen-too Barraaa ...

        ...May the swift swimming penguin peck your eyes out...

        Ak ba barrat bin fugarraa...

        ...And the joke is on you...

        Vac nit New Jersey

        ...the cave is in New Jersey

        (Maniacle laugh) New Jersey...

    • I like Gentoo's forums. It gives a chance for eager 14-year old Gentoo users to cry out in zealotous rapture AND be on-topic.

      Just keep it to yourselves, please.

      On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.

      People that use Gentoo and know

      • One Man's Zealot is Another Man's Enthusiast (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:35PM (#7362716)
        On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.

        One of Gentoo's real strenths is that it provides the tools that take the tedium out of dependency resolution and compilation (a form of *BSD 'ports' on steroids), without obfuscating the underlying *NIX configurations and filesystem organization. This allows relative newcomers to learn how to setup a GNU/Linux system step by step, understand its organization and how it all fits together, without getting lost in the quagmire of learning the intricacies of autoconf, make, gcc, python or perl scripting.

        People who are in to such things tend to become quite ecstatic when they discover such a platform, and such an implimentation. The rest of us, who like to just get work done with a minimum of fuss, may or may not find it appealing. I personally find it to be the best distro I've used by far (and I've been using Linux since the days before distros of any kind even existed...before X even ran on it) ... but I'm sure in the not so distant future something even cooler, from some other quadrant, will come along and surpass it.

        People that use Gentoo and know Linux are cool. They don't run around the internet telling everyone about Gentoo, either. There is another type of Gentoo user...I'm honestly very sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics.

        Well, as with any project, there are those few who are rabidly zealous and seem to have an overdeveloped evangelical streak. Debian, Mandrake, and others have had their fair share of overzealous enthusiasts as well (as does Mac OS X and, I fear, Windows...though one never knows how many of the latter aren't simply bought and paid for, at sub-industry wages and without medical benefits, no doubt).

        I am glad, however, that they are evangelizing a Linux distro rather than a real-world religious cult a la $cientology or Mormonism. That having been said, it is natural for people who discover something new that really, really rocks in their mind to want to tell others, particularly if they think it might help someone who is having trouble.

        An example where I was guilty of this was with 'transcode', a swiss-army knife tool for converting between various audio and video formats, backing up DVDs, and even authoring one's own DVDs from home video footage. It is a bear to compile, having done so myself under Mandrake, Debian, and others. Someone was having an inordinant amount of trouble getting the thing to work under Mandrake (the binaries didn't work properly, and the source dependencies are, well, hellacious to put it mildly). Having been down that road myself under both Debian and Mandrake, and having found it incredibly easy to install under Gentoo, I suggested that the user might want to try out Gentoo as an alternative. He did, got the thing installed with no trouble, and was greatful.

        The question is, was that an off-topic bit of gentoo zealotry, or an ontopic suggestion to someone having trouble getting a notoriously difficult-to-install package running? The person I replied to would argue the latter ... others in the list, particularly those with strong partisan feelings toward another distribution, would probably argue the former. For me, personally, it is irrelevant, and while I do not go around telling everyone they should run Gentoo (a Knoppix Live CD is a far better thing to give a newbie than a Gentoo Live CD, for obvious reasons ... indeed, it is often a better rescue CD for Gentoo systems than a Gentoo LiveCD is), I am certainly not one to apologize for recommending it when I think it will solve someone's problems.

        No distro can claim the fact that it has indirectly made thousands of users cringe
        • One of Gentoo's real strenths is that it provides the tools that take the tedium out of dependency resolution and compilation (a form of *BSD 'ports' on steroids), without obfuscating the underlying *NIX configurations and filesystem organization. This allows relative newcomers to learn how to setup a GNU/Linux system step by step, understand its organization and how it all fits together, without getting lost in the quagmire of learning the intricacies of autoconf, make, gcc, python or perl scripting.

          I agr

    • ten years later..
      the gentoo forums..

      Because even though it's nearly 2004, thanks to Gentoo there are STILL people writing /etc/fstab and XF86Config files by hand! Those LDP HOWTO's that haven't been updated since the 1.x days still are useful.

  • People wonder... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris_Stankowitz ( 612232 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:26PM (#7361983)
    why linux can still be a great alternative for windows user. There TDLP equivelnt in the M$ world consist of Clippy!

    Of course one must be willing to RTF-how-to.

    So on this the 10th anniversary of the How-to, here is a little "up-yours-clippy" :)~

    • "It looks like you are writing a HOWTO. How much would you like to charge people for your assistance?"

    • As a couple of counter-examples: MSDN [microsoft.com] and Knowledge Base [microsoft.com].

      However, since it's "M$", you refuse to even look and discover that, hey, their documentation is actually pretty damn good.

      So on the 10th anniversary of the LDP (and congratulations, that's quite a feat) I say "up-yours" to blindly irrational sheep-morons.

      • Re:People wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:41PM (#7362161) Journal

        However, since it's "M$", you refuse to even look and discover that, hey, their documentation is actually pretty damn good.

        The documentation might be. But the community support (in my experience -- mod me down if you want) sucks. In my time, I've posted several questions to the MS newsgroups (mainly about Terminal Services). Similar questions for Linux would have received several replies (ranging from RTFM to a step by step instruction of what I needed to do) within a few minutes. Days later, I had no answer from anyone (MS or otherwise) as to if what I needed to do was even possible or not! And my question was hardly all that complicated... "Is there a way to log the IP address of PCs connecting to the Terminal Server without using third-party software?" Even google couldn't find the answer for me.

        Given the choice, I'd take Linux and it's community anyday over MS's community or "paid" support. Unfortunately, I don't have that choice, because of MSs monopoly.

        • If you have your audit logging setup correctly (default settings on Win2003), it's logged in the security event log. I just tested on my server... here's the result.

          Event Type: Success Audit
          Event Source: Security
          Event Category: Logon/Logoff
          Event ID: 682
          Date: 2003.10.31
          Time: 4:15:53 PM
          User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
          Computer: servername
          Description:
          Session reconnected to winstation:
          User Name: username
          Domain: domainname
          Logon ID: logonID

        • "Is there a way to log the IP address of PCs connecting to the Terminal Server without using third-party software?" Even google couldn't find the answer for me.

          RTFM. Google found it very quickly for me.

          http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/defaul t. asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/maint ain/monitor/logevnts.asp
        • In my time, I've posted several questions to the MS newsgroups (mainly about Terminal Services).

          Most people dont like answering questions that can be easily found by searching Technet first.

          Between Technet, EventID.net, Google, and newsgroups (and pretty much in that order), there isnt one problem I havent solved.

          "Is there a way to log the IP address of PCs connecting to the Terminal Server without using third-party software?"

          Its called a logon script.

      • MSDN and the Knowlege Base have an incredible amount of useful information. The problem is that it's very badly organized. Case in point: I needed to look up the syntax of the MessageBox API call. I couldn't remember what section of the Windows API documentation it was under, so I tried the search engine. The first hundred results contained all sorts of irrelevant things, such as the VB.NET MsgBox procedure and dozens of examples that just incidentally used the MessageBox function.
      • However, since it's "M$", you refuse to even look and discover that, hey, their documentation is actually pretty damn good.

        Microsoft documentation;

        1. Technically correct, practically useless

        That said, after 7 years man pages are just now starting to make sense reflexively. I understand the reasoning behind man pages, though they start and end dense with few helpful examples.

        • Technically correct, practically useless

          Not always. Sometimes it's also technically useless, practically life-saving. Lemme tell you an old joke to illustrate the point:

          There was this helicopter pilot whose job was to ferry VIP's from Seattle airport to downtown. One day he found himself with a passenger in a pea soup fog somewhere over downtown Seattle. No landmarks were visible and the passenger became panicky. The pilot said "Don't worry" and very gradually let the helicopter down until it was hoveri

  • I remember... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shakrai ( 717556 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:26PM (#7361986) Journal

    I remember using the early HOWTOs to compile my first Linux kernel (back in the days when your distro didn't come with a one-size-fits-all), setup my first PPP connection for my 14.4 Internet connection.

    Many thanks to all those who have contributed over the years. The community is in your debt.

  • Thank goodness for these people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Liselle ( 684663 ) <slashdot@lisWELTYelle.net minus author> on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:26PM (#7361989) Journal
    Not all of us are amazingly inclined when it comes to batting around in Linux. I just revived an old machine and gave RedHat a try... with no local Linux guru, these things are all I have to go on. No idea what I would do without these people putting their hearts into the documentation effort.

  • The Project's so good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x12d3 ( 623370 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:28PM (#7362003)
    The projects so good that publishers just publish HOWTO's verbatim ocassionally, for print.

    • Actually, they take the HOWTOs and reprint them in a 1200 page book and charge $50 for it, because it is extremely easy money from newbies who think the book will provide helpful glue to the documentation. The the horror of the newbie, the book provides nothing more than what was already on the documentation CD-ROM, and the newbie feels terrible about wasting $50.

      Yes, this is exactly what happened to the newbie who purchased Linux Unleashed.
      • I bought the set as part of a Linux bundle back in '96. It was incredibly helpful. The table of contents gave me a good idea of scope. Often I read both HOWTOs on a related topic to figure out what I needed to do.

        I managed to get RedHat 4.1 plus some major apps running pretty well on a "modern" (at the time) laptop; though I did need Metro-X for anything other than 640x480. I never would have gotten there without the HOWTOs and an x86 Unix (the obvious one remaining nameless) would have run me a grand

  • Linux Documentation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:31PM (#7362046)
    What we need is a user friendly "linux documentation" that uses X. It should allow complete customization of everything that is normally done at the command line. Man pages aren't near user friendly enough - they are way too technical. General help, examples, common options, FAQs, and advanced options for each topic would be ideal. Or, if the person doesn't like the command line, they could do it with the central linux configuration UI. It shouldn't be a limited subset specific to each distribution, it should be centralized. The LDP would be a good place for much of the help information, but more 'dummed down' versions would also be necessary.

    --
    The Zingler [redhotcarpetcleaning.com]

    • Re:Linux Documentation (Score:2, Informative)

      by fred87 ( 720738 )
      "man man2html" :) I have an html version of all the manpages on my apache webserver, much more readable
      • Older versions of Galeon supported the man: protocol, where you could type man:programname into the address bar and see the appropriate manpage dynamically converted to HTML. I don't know if current Galeon still does this, but it's a pretty cool feature.

  • Thanks, Matt! (Score:5, Funny)

    by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:32PM (#7362059) Homepage Journal
    If it weren't for the LDP, I never would have got that first machine running Slackware (kernel version 1.0.8) back in nineteen ninety mumble, on my Big Bad 486/50 with its Big Bad 20MB and Big Bad 1.08GB hard drive.

    Now I'm proud to run a machine that's over twice as fast, with three times the memory! And I still use Matt Walsh's writings to get by. Three Cheers and a virtual beer!

    • Gee, that's sweet. Time to upgrade that PC I think...

      Actually, I was just a small part of this. Michael K. Johnson and Lars Wirzenius did a huge amount to get this project off the ground. I am still amazed at how much Linux has taken off. You can now go to Barnes and Noble and see a whole rack full of Linux books. Who knew?

  • 10 Years of putting the F in RTFM! (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:33PM (#7362071) Journal
    Now blow out your candles and update your howtos damnit!

  • FreeBSD Handbook (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:35PM (#7362093)
    You know, I'd just be happy with documentation on par with the FreeBSD Handbook. Seriously. I picked up a copy years ago (BSD 4.4 I believe) and it covered just about everything you'd ever need to know to get started and was extremely well-written.

    I've *never* found an equivalent to that book for Linux and it's a damn shame.

  • You don't need to RTFM (Score:3, Informative)

    by trikberg ( 621893 ) <trikberg.hotmail@com> on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:49PM (#7362240)
    The great philosopher dm brings you the best way [bash.org] to get help with Linux.

  • Flaimbait (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:52PM (#7362266)
    The Linux Documentation Project is happy to announce its 10-year anniversary!

    ...and most of their docs are celebrating their 10th year anniversary since their last change/update.

    Ok, so it's a slight exaggeration, but an enormous number of TLDP documents- mostly HOWTOs- are so horribly, embarrassingly out of date that they are completely, entirely, useless. Like the networking related howtos that cover 2.0 kernel features...

    I cannot actually think of a single major HOWTO that I've actually found up-to-date enough to be useable on a linux distro released in the last 2 years.

    • I cannot actually think of a single major HOWTO that I've actually found up-to-date enough to be useable on a linux distro released in the last 2 years.

      That's because you are probably installing one of those candy-ass distros on new fancy-pants hardware. Why, just the other day a HOWTO helped me to install a PCMCIA network card on a P75 laptop.

      Seriously, it did.

      When HOWTOs refer to config files and the like, they do get outdated. I have actually been pretty surprised how relevant a HOWTO from 1997 has

      • That's because you are probably installing one of those candy-ass distros on new fancy-pants hardware.

        Or, what I could be doing is hardware and distro indepentend. In any case, at the time, it was a P4/1Ghz, intel mobo, intel network card, intel graphics. Very standard system, running "candy ass" Redhat 8.0.

    • Re:Flaimbait (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bob Uhl ( 30977 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:30PM (#7362670)
      Well, then spend some time to contribute more up-to-date docs! It's not that hard, just simple writing. If outdated docs are your itch, scratch 'em by writing new ones. This is free software, after all, and it's produced by all of us.
      • Well, then spend some time to contribute more up-to-date docs! It's not that hard, just simple writing. If outdated docs are your itch, scratch 'em by writing new ones. This is free software, after all, and it's produced by all of us.

        That'd be great, except the whole reason I was looking for HOWTOs on a particular subject was because I needed to figure out how to do it- not because I already knew how to do it.

        The problem is that those with the knowledge are keeping it to themselves(hello, kernel develop

        • ummm I think I prefer the kernel developers staying right where they are and dedicating their spare time to improving the kernel tyvm. Maybe we could reassign the community trolls or something.
      • Ahh the answer to everything when it comes to saying bad things about Linux.
        • Well of course. It's free software: that doesn't mean you get it for free, but that you're free to improve it. It's all about the freedom.

          With proprietary software one is beholden to the developers, while with free software one is one of the developers. With the former, complaining is all one can do, while with the latter, one has other options.

          • So because I have principles ( software should be free) but not the Python skills, I shouldn't use it?
            • No--you should learn more. The set and level of your skills are not static, but rather ever-increasing (until the onset of senility, anyway). Richard Stallman didn't spring fully-formed from his father's head with a knowledge of hacking; Linux Torvalds's skill at coding didn't wash in on sea-foam: they had to learn.

              Feel free to use free software. Feel free to learn how to improve free software. Don't feel particularly free to complain that others don't make the improvements you want.

              • You're preaching to the choir, for the most part. What I was trying to get acorss is that not everyone who wants to use Free Software has the time or knowledge to start hacking on it.

    • Re:Flaimbait (Score:4, Informative)

      by lupercalia ( 310569 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:56PM (#7362939)
      The LDP docs are updated all the time. This list [tldp.org] shows how many HOWTOs were updated recently -- about one per day on average.

      Some of the docs do apply to old versions of Linux, but there are lots of people still using 2.2 kernels out there. Just check the revision date of any document before you use it, and you should get an idea of whether it will apply to a recent distribution.

      HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LDP!!!
  • All those docs are a great help when troubleshooting! That is, if people read them.

  • Ten years of adolescence... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:01PM (#7362358) Journal
    First of all, I'd like to debunk the idea that, "there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation." That's BS--Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades. Four feet of manuals (man pages, install guides, networking config, X programming, etc., etc., etc.) were considered absolutely essential material back in the day, and they were generally really good! Today we have docs.(vendor).com, as a pretty damned fine replacement. At no point in recent history has the Unix community suffered from a general shortage of good documentation.

    Now the LDP has come a long way in the last ten years, and let me join with everyone here in saying, "Congratulations! Linux wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is without you."

    That said, there are two fundamental weaknesses that stem from the nature of the LDP, and I'd like to see some way of modifying the project to address them as much as possible.

    First of all is the lack of a formal review process. As I understand it, anyone can submit a doc, and it will by accepted if it meets basic criteria. (mostly proper SGML/Docbook formatting.)
    There really needs to be a review process, similar to code review for proper software projects. (of course, a project should also have a documentation writer/maintainer, which would invalidate much of the LDP, but I digress...) I have seen HOWTOs which were unintelligible, incomplete, unmaintained, and wildly inaccurate. Without grammar and technical review, stuff like this just keeps popping up at random.

    The second problem is something that the LDP cannot (and shouldn't have to) correct on its own. It's incomplete--it is not a complete repository of Linux documentation, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, it shouldn't have to be--software should come with documentation! Howtos and guides should be supplements to that documentation, not the only source for it. Unfortunately, freelance developers don't always see things that way.

    Anyways, enough sour grapes. Happy Birthday LDP! Keep on going, and keep on gettting better.

    • I always figured that Man pages should have a URL reference to comments so that if you're stuck on something you can just read the modded up thread on "But I'm trying to do this with an NCC1701-H!" or "Does anyone have an example?"

      Then if the URL is introduced in a standard fashion, a specialized man page reader could show the comments.

      After five years or so, the author could then pick out the good questions and touch up the information.

    • Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades.

      You've gotta be kiddin!

      Every kid who has made it to third year CS should know that the man pages are awful. They are neither a user manual nor technical documentation.

      • Hmmm. Maybe you need to get past third year CS to realise that the man pages for Unix are great documentation. Man pages for Linux are...sick to the point of being broken.

        At any rate, they were only four of the 13 binders in the last printed documentation set we had, if I remember. There were programmers' guides, users' guides, intro manuals, boot-block building guides, detailed hardware manuals, and everything else.
    • We do have a formal review process, and sometimes we have to pull the plug on documents containing factual erreors. The review process is handled by volunteers and coordinated by Tabatha - feel free to join them.

      If you find some documents are missing, why don't you take one yourself? You certainly have more free time to give to the LDP than most authors who maintain 4 documents each.
      • " We do have a formal review process, and sometimes we have to pull the plug on documents containing factual erreors."

        Ah, then my apologies--things have certainly changed for the better then!

        As far as writing documents, you make a very large (and incorrect) assumption about my time, when you say that I certainly have more free time to give. Sadly, I don't. More to the point though, there are few Linux topics I feel well enough versed in to write quasi-definitive documentation for. (or in fact, any docume
        • Do you think I have lots of free time? I'm MD resident/PhD, going to maintain my 4th HOWTO - XFS (I'm lucky the 3 other ones don't change so much).

          So if you unfortunately have no more time to give than I do, never mind - just do what you can.

          If everybody does what he/she can, then we will have more up-to-date documents.
    • Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades.

      Take a look at the documentation that came with VMS compared to Unix. Unix has always been known for lots of poor documentation. man was invented to allow documentation to change rapidly since Unix systems (unlike the compition) didn't have monothic releases of their associated support apps.

  • pretty poor documentation (Score:3, Informative)

    by essdodson ( 466448 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:04PM (#7362391) Homepage
    The documentation is pretty poor. I think if Linux were a more organized and coherent community higher quality documentation would surface.

    Until then, you can always use FreeBSD. The documentation requires you have a basic level of clue, however it's exceptionally nice documentation for the most part.

  • For Their Source Management (Meta Content) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:04PM (#7362394) Homepage Journal

    While I've looked to LDP for Howto's and information about specific Linux setup issues, there's another entirely different reason I keep tabs on them:

    To find out their recommended practice for document native formats.
    They're interested in being able to automatically generate high quality documents in a variety of formats, including both LaTeX and HTML.

    I've been interested in authoring options using DocBook that would enable me to produce highly flexible document sources based on open standards that would be useful long into the future.

  • "Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation."

    That's still the case for a lot of it. Just rummage through the LDP sometime. Plenty of that stuff is obsolete and hasn't been updated for a long time.
  • Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly.

    What planet do you live on? The general state of documentation for Linux and OSS applications in general is just awful. A number of GNU apps have good-to-excellent documentation, and Perl springs immediately to mind, but on the whole, I'd say that the general state of open source docs is not appreciably better than it was five years ago, and only marginally better than what it was ten years ago.

    As for the Linux Docume
    • What would you suggest for outdated documentation?

      We can't simply remove it - it's still usefull for a lot of people who use old versions.

      Ideally, there would be enough volunteers so that it wouldn't be a problem. Meanwhyle we do what we can. We have a strong peer reviewing process, and we take out documents that shouldn't be there. Outdated documents that can not help are moved to a separate directory, waiting for a new maintainer.

      So in the free software way, stop whining and act! This "woefully out of
    • I hate to tell you, this isn't grandma's house. If there is a mess one the floor, elves aren't going to come and clean it up. If you want it done, you do it. Or, you pay someone to do it.

      Enough bitching.

  • While I applaud the goal of the Linux documentation project I think that it's helping linux avoid the real problem of usability.

    It's one thing to have good docs, but it's a much better thing to not even need docs. Users are fickle and lazy, and a lot of them will just quit if they can't figure out how to do something while they are doing it. Linux should try and avoid the need for a massive series of in-depth how-tos, and strive for good usability for common folk right out of the box (or off the CD).

  • Weak spots (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ogerman ( 136333 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @10:31PM (#7364791)
    TLDP is a great thing, but there are definitely some weak areas -- specifically, HOWTO's that cover rapidly changing technologies. Topics like wireless, ACPI, X11 fonts, etc. become out of date quickly enough to make the HOWTO's nearly useless. Too often I end up having to Google newsgroups and random sites for hours or even dig through code to find the answers I need. There needs to be a reliable but very easy means of developer-contributed documentation in these cases.

  • Lies! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 )
    Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly.

    No it hasn't. Linux documentation still sucks. Most of the stuff on LDP is outdated or irrelevant, and there's no cohesive guide to dealing with a system because any linux installation is made up of a ton of little parts from different projects that keep changing.
  • As time goes on, there will be two categories of things that need documentation, since almost everything else will be handled automatically;
    1. The truely difficult (can't be automated)
    2. The trivial (the basic commands to tell the software what you want done)

    For the difficult tasks (ex: showing how LVM works and how to implement it across a RAID array) you'll just have to slog through the hard parts from concepts through implementation to understand why you want to do it in the first place and what your spec

    • Every time I see a commercial for Video Professor [videoprofessor.com], I wonder about producing something similar for *nix. Call it Professor Tux. There are extensions for VNC that let you record and play-back interactions, so you'd just need to add a synchronized audio/text-caption stream and show how to do things inside a 640x480 window, then have a hierarchical index of tasks front-ending the animations. You could probably create something that does it all entirely in JavaScript off of a CD-ROM.

      Of course, I haven't actu

  • tha while there is a tremendous amount of information in the Documention Project's output, the critics who say much of it is obsolete seem to be correct.

    It may not be exactly obsolete since in many cases, you can still do what the documentation says.

    However, as an example, when I went to set up my DSL line to work in Linux, I read through the DSL howto and the network howtos, etc. What I failed to realize is that Red Hat already had SCRIPTS set up in 7.3 to handle all that. I ended up doing manually wha

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