Comment Re:Microsoft offers excellent documentation. (Score 1) 110
While I wouldn't agree that Microsoft provides excellent documentation (trying to figure out how to accomplish task x through the Win32 API the first time can be hellish), I do agree that most open-source projects, at least the ones that I've encountered, have little documentation, no documentation, or very poor documentation for use by either future developers or end-users.
I feel that a lack of coherent man pages or other help files designed with the end-user in mind is one of the reasons that Linux is commonly viewed as "too hard". When one wants to accomplish a relatively simple task, one shouldn't have to consult 4 wikis, 2 IRC channels and countless HOWTOS to get the answer because the help file sucks. One incident that comes to mind was the Help system in Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog", where several topics consisted of "Fill this in later".
I feel that a lack of coherent man pages or other help files designed with the end-user in mind is one of the reasons that Linux is commonly viewed as "too hard". When one wants to accomplish a relatively simple task, one shouldn't have to consult 4 wikis, 2 IRC channels and countless HOWTOS to get the answer because the help file sucks. One incident that comes to mind was the Help system in Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog", where several topics consisted of "Fill this in later".
