[Sderby] Jargon et al

[Harry Sheppard]

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I'm going to steal Stormbringer's disclaimer here:: This is just a personal 
opinion which carries no weight whatsoever and so can be happily ignored by 
anyone who doesn't share it!

On Tuesday 10 August 2004 17:33, Dave Coulson wrote:
> My second point is that the history of Linux is bound up in personal
> development, so that people have to work to gain understanding.
Err - that's half of the fun in learning a new OS, isn't it? If you don't 
_WORK_ to achieve something, surely that achievement is worthless? If it 
hasn't made you think and deepened your knowledge and understanding, what's 
the point in the first place? You may as well follow the Microsoft route :-)

 I would rather _KNOW_ what my OS is doing (and why it's doing it) rather than 
sitting and scratching my head, frowning at another Microsoft BSOD (Blue 
Screen of Death) claiming a fatal exception 0E has occured...

> Most HOW-To's etc are written by specialists in their fields who assume that 
> the readers knowledge is the same as theirs.
I'd have to disagree with that as the whole 'raison d'être' of a howto is to 
get someone who hasn't undertaken a particular project / procedure before 
into a state such that they may do so. To have a howto aimed at someone with 
equivelant knowledge of the author is self defeating, surely?

I will concede that some howtos assume prior knowledge of a particular 
discipline, but that can usually be addressed by refering to other howtos and 
documentation that cover the area where said knowledge is assumed.

At the end of the day, it would be lovely to have a distribution that holds 
your hand throughout every step, accounting for - and accommodating - every 
possible configuration hiccough it can encounter. PC hardware (not to mention 
all of the other platforms Linux supports) is such a broad stage on which to 
perform I'm generally very impressed as to the level of help linux does give 
you.

To a large extent, most distributions allow you to make informed choices by 
ways of their installer interface and those that rely on the user knowing 
what they're doing (read "Gentoo") tend to have exceptionally good 
documentation in lieu. 

When that fails, there are newsgroups, user groups, mailing lists and 
distribution-specific forums in which to voice questions, any of which tend 
to yield an answer in an extremely short amount of time.

> Perhaps the time has come for a beginners series of HOW-To's to be written.
At the end of the day, most Linux developments and advancements are community 
driven. If there's something that you feel could be / needs to be done 
better, pitch in when you're in a position to do so!

> At least by defining acronyms, the write would point the beginner to the
> correct area from which to gain new knowledge.
We all started learning Linux somewhere, be it due to our interest being 
piqued by a friend or colleague, frustration at the "de facto starndard" 
Desktop OS or simply on moral grounds. Communities like this very one exist 
to help fellow users be they gurus or newbies, and as regards acronyms and 
jargon? You can always refer to Eric S. Raymond's highly entertaining Jargon 
File, available at:

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/

If that fails to yield results, I have yet to come across a term that can't be 
defined by a Google search in under twenty seconds :-) For example, a while 
back I came across CARP in the OpenBSD context. Entering "CARP OpenBSD" into 
google comes back in the google listing with "New tools for filtering gateway 
failover: CARP (the Common Address Redundancy Protocol)" - it tells you what 
it is and what it stands for without even visiting the site!

If _THAT_ fails, try the Acronym Finder:

http://www.acronymfinder.com/

If that also fails, you've mis-typed the acronym :-)

At the end of the day, you need to put a little in to get something out - 
twenty seconds on Google for me is an acceptable time penalty to extend my 
knowledge that bit further...

> My wife is a proofreader and copy editor and adopts the practice specified
> by most sensible publishers. The procedure  is to define all acronyms ONCE
> in the text fully, so that their meaning  is clear.
An admirable practice for printed documentation, however there is simply no 
need for electronic docs as you're already sat at a computer that has, in all 
likelihood, an internet connection - just search for it!

Cheers,
- --Harry
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