[ale] I am so tired of Linux Fanatics

[Jim Kinney]

My greatest "AH HA!" moment reading man pages was when I discovered I could
search for terms within man pages by hitting /<search term>  or /"search
term" when it had spaces.

And yes, release notes should be merged into the man pages as a "current
version" section. I recently spent many days trying in vain to get a
particular aplications client libraries to compile. Total fail. Turns out
there was a blurb in a .2 version release notes that briefly pointed out the
client libs were merged into the server libs and not needed as a stand-alone
anymore. Since entire application had various version numbers for the
different pieces, I had grabbed the latest of each.

at least there _were_ release notes!

eons ago (before SuSE drank the kool-aide and open-sourced their installer)
I was tinkering with a SuSE installation issue. They had no release notes on
their installer. They had notes on the distro but their installer was a
black box. And it was failing to run on my chipset (that was about 2 years
old so it should have been supported). End result is RedHat installed nicely
and their notes on their installer covered the chipset initialization
failure and provided a workaround (don't ask. It was like RedHat 4.2 era).
Thusly, I wound up firmly in the RedHat camp since their output was more
professional and robust and informative and open. And unlike the Debian
installs at the time (which always worked - BTW) did not require that I know
memory address space values (in hex of course) in order to accept a
configuration during installtion. Granted, if I just hit "OK" on everything
it all worked but it felt like a dead vertical learning curve while carrying
a load of lead bricks by a cord in my teeth while climbing a greased rope
that was on fire.

And from that was born Ubuntu....  :D

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:34 AM, Paul Cartwright <ale at pcartwright.com> wrote:

> On Wed July 7 2010, Jim Philips wrote:
> > The problem with RTFM is the assumption that the fine manual was well
> > written in the first place. I have been using Linux since 1995 and I have
> >  always felt that the man pages were written in exceptionally poor
> fashion.
> > The immediate underlying assumption is that you need to know about
> > *everything* and that most basic functions of a command are beside the
> > point. The man page for grep is an excellent example. They never go
> > straight to the point. The high use examples are always buried somewhere
> > that you would least be likely to look for them. The "F" in RTFM is not
> at
> > all deserved. How can I find a file containing "x" in my home directory?
> > The question will only be answered in the most convoluted way.
>
> I forget the man page I was looking for once, but the option I was looking
> for
> was somewhere in 3,000 lines of gobbledegook, and I couldn't find it.. some
> of those man pages are just totally outrageous! This App I used to install
> came out with a new version, and it didn't install right. I read the
> installation guide backwards & forwards, with no help. I finally asked
> the "GURU" and he said " oh, that option is listed in the release-notes!!
>
>
> --
> Paul Cartwright
> Registered Linux user # 367800
> Registered Ubuntu User #12459
> http://usdebtclock.org/
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits

 Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by
faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.
   Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992
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