[ale] using ipod touch or iphone with linux (yeah, OSeX!)

[George L. Allen]

On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 02:36:05PM -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
> I do tend to get quite short-tempered
> with people when the have problems and can't seem to understand that
> they need to at least try something different. I get really steamed
> when faced with the "stubbornly ignorant and proud of it" mentality.
> 
> But my major mistake was in the mis-comunication of the root problem:
> TRAINING!!!

In a sense - I think things may have been a bit easier when I first found
linux, for learning the fundamentals. At the time, I knew of slackware, HOWTOs,
and manpages.

There is TBs of cruft out there on "how to do x-task on y-gui with z-distro in
[kde|gnome]." But most of the LDP HOWTOs haven't been updated in several years.
I think theres a great deal of added value to referencing something like the
"Linux Networking Howto" that explains
/etc/{hosts,resolv.conf,services,inetd.conf,...} and gives the brief overview
of TCP/IP at the admin level that someone needs to make the jump from someone
punching an IP into a gui whether on a MAC/Win/KDE or Gnome... to someone that
actually understands the system, how it works, why it works that way, and then
they can use the gui if they want, but they can easily dig as deep as they want
to learn also. 

What I'm seeing however - is that many of these documents that explain the *nix
fundamentals and theory, are: (1) becoming dated. The Network HOWTO is dated
'99, and describes linux 2.0 and 2.2 instead of 2.4 and 2.6..., and (2) getting
buried in cruft - because Google doesn't take you there anymore. The Linux
Documentation Project used to float to the top for many things - but now much
of the documentation is becoming distro/gui specific, Ubuntu being the gorilla in
the room. 

For what its worth - I've setup my family with Ubuntu ... but when someone says
"I'd like to LEARN linux" I usually tell them to go with slackware or gentoo so
they have to Learn something.

-George