[SGVLUG] Yay Debian - 90k machines for brazil news article

[David Lawyer]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 09:28:14AM -0700, Charles N Wyble wrote:
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> 
Regarding Linux in Brazil'
> David Lawyer wrote:
> > There are lots of problems one of which is that Linux isn't too
> > well documented, even in English.

> Um. I have to vehemently disagree with this statement. I think Linux is
> incredibly well documented. And no I am not talking about having the
> source code and reading through that :)
> 
> Take Ubuntu for example. Why do you think its so popular? Well 1) About
> 90% of everything works out of the box. 2) What little doesn't work out
> of the box (for example requiring proprietary drivers) is easily enabled
> with a couple mouse clicks. 3) Anything more advanced then that is
> easily found in the documentation.
> 
> Notice I said documentation. Not a google search (which is the standard
> response when people talk about documentation.) No I mean actual written
> documentation in one place. What is that place?
> 
> https://wiki.Ubuntu.com/ and https://help.Ubuntu.com/
> 
> Also the forums have a substantial amount of articles on various topics
> with good comments. Granted thats not traditional documentation and kind
> of drifts into the Google category, but I think its an acceptable balance.
> 
> I have used Linux for 10+ years. Since 2.0.30. The documentation has
> improved substantially and continues to do so. I run ubuntu on all of my
> systems (2 laptops. A media server. A high end vmware server). Its well
> documented and supported and everything I need just works.

I've also been using Linux for 10+ years and have had all kinds of
problems with documentation.  But I've always used Debian (which is
what Brazil is getting) and not Ubuntu.  A few of my problems with
documentation (some have been fixed due to my complaints).

hwclock Debian documentation resulted in gross errors in automatic
adjusting of time.

linuxdoc-tools failed to tell how to avoid getting escape sequences in
the text output.  

Someone took over authorship of some abandoned documents in the Linux
Documentation Project and added all sorts of erroneous statements.

No correct documentation on how to get my sound card to work properly
under alsa, even though there's a driver for it.
=========================================================================
When I manned the Linux Documentation Project booth at the Linux Expo
in Montreal Canada in 2000, a frequent complaint was about outdated
documentation.

Stallman has implied that a major problem with Linux is the lack of
good free documentation.  Others who have asked the question as to why
Linux is not more popular on the desktops come up with documentation
deficiencies as one of the reasons.

The man pages are often tersely written and many don't give examples
nor explain things very well.

Another problem is that documentation is to some extent distribution
dependent and there is a wasteful duplication of effort for each
distribution to need to create it's own documentation.

> You should know better then to make comments like that on a Linux list :)

People who try Linux and stick with it, are more likely to be the ones
that have not had severe problems with documentation.  Those that do
have severe problems have likely given up on Linux and thus are not on
any Linux list.  So many of the people who might agree with me are not
likely on any Linux list.  But I think that some of the people who use
Linux will agree with me.

I'm pretty busy right now but I'll try to look into the Ubuntu
documentation you mention.  Thanks for pointing it out. 

Comparing Linux documentation to Windows is interesting since Linux
makes no attempt (with a few exceptions) to conceal the real workings
of the hardware/software.  Thus in this way Linux documentation is a
lot better than Windows.

But Linux has all sorts of hardware problems since much hardware isn't
supported (or not supported adequately) by Linux: modems, printers,
etc.  It's mainly due to hardware that has secret interfaces.  And
documentation about all the hardware problems isn't always complete or
up-to-date.  But with the Linux desktop only having about 1% market
share in the US, and with documentation being done by volunteers,
Linux Documentation is better than one might expect given the
circumstances.

Maybe I'm partly wrong about the documentation.  I guess how one
rates it depends on what you compare it to.  And I suppose I've been
comparing it to well written books (a minority of published books).

I've also written some documentation which you can find at
www.lafn.org/~dave/linux/.  And I've given a couple of presentations
at conferences regarding documentation licensing.  Right now I'm
suggesting that the Linux Documentation Project incorporate under the
umbrella of "Software in the Public Interest".  We desperately need
volunteers to help out.  Two people on this list volunteered to help
the Linux Documentation Project but never followed thru.  Any more
volunteers?

			David Lawyer