[Sussex] Problems, various........

[John D.]

Alan Pope wrote:

>Please don't take this the wrong way, but I was a little surprised
>that someone who has difficulty reading man pages, and can't burn CDs
>from the command line would go for gentoo!
>
>I wouldn't recommend gentoo to anyone who hasn't got a basic
>understanding/grounding in linux at least. I'm not trying to belittle
>your efforts, just that I forsee further frustration down the road..
>
Ha ha!, you might have missed my point Alan.

I, am "a child of the windows GUI".  My first pc had W95 on it, I never 
had the opportunity to learn anything even vaguely connected to CLI, 
until I "discovered" Linux in all it's wonderful incarnations.

One of my main (well, only, really) gripes, is that "not all 
documentation is created equal".

Gentoo docs are, (opinion), considerably better than most. They seem to 
have made considerable effort is producing them. Plus, if you take the 
general ethos of how gentoo can be installed i.e. stages 1, 2 and 3 etc, 
then you'll appreciate that even an idiot like myself can manage to do a 
stage 3 + GRP install.

After which, basic management is more straight forward than most distros 
(again, opinion).

As for reading man pages, to be honest, trying to comprehend what they 
are actually trying to say, just bores the arse off me. I'm a driver 
(literally), not a mechanic. The only reason that I've learned bits of 
linux info, is because I've had too. My reasons behind learning linux 
are social, moral and ethical. Otherwise I'd have just stayed with window$.

Man pages, or even TLDP, are excellent resources, but only if you are 
"in the know". Afterall, accounts are just mathematics, but it still 
requires accountants to produce a "proper" set of accounts.

I don't feel that it's particularly helpful to set the information out 
in a format that give the "bald facts" of something, but then requires 
considerable technical knowledge to decypher it in such a way as to make 
it truely useful.

As for problems with burning CD's, well even using one of the GUI 
frontends, it isn't always obvious how things should be done, especially 
if your only yardstick is windows based. I really don't know how I could 
check the device to make sure that it is actually working properly i.e. 
I haven't got the test kit any longer, let alone detailed system specs 
with all the various test values for individual components.

Hence, given the "technical nature" of things IT, it might be better for 
a larger number of converts, if that very "technical nature" wasn't then 
published in an ever greater technical rhetoric, as to translate it into 
incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, so only a limited number of specialists 
understand it at a glance.

In other words, installing gentoo (stage 3+ GRP) is easy, I just have to 
follow the instructions (a bit like those "airfix" model planes when I 
was a kid) and I have a running system, which is manageable to a basic 
standard. Whereas burning discs from the command line and reading man 
pages so that I understand what they're saying and more to the point, 
knowing which page(s) are going to point me towards finding out "what I 
want to know", isn't!

Like "British Rail", I'll get there eventually. Though it'll probably 
mean a virtual blizzard of potentially "lame" questions.

regards

John