From: system@micromed.com (Duane Davis) Subject: Re: Importance of the DOC project Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1993 01:17:33 PDT
mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh) writes:
> I think that's the one key problem with the Linux newbie community right now:
> lack of basic information about UNIX. A lot of UNIX newbies are trying out
> Linux and, honestly, are lost. That's to be expected--- UNIX is quite
> difficult at first (compared to MS-DOS and Windows). What all Linux/UNIX
> newbies need to do is go buy a good book on using/running UNIX (I suggest
> books by O'Reilly and Associates for the good scoop) before even attempting
> to dive into Linux.
I don't agree with this. Although I'm not a *nix expert I'm also not new
to *nix. I have installed and run 3 other *nix's besides Linux and didn't
have anywhere near the problems because they came with a REAL installation
program, all the files where there, and the books agreed with the setup.
Most Linux users recomend the SLS package for first time installations.
In my opinion the SLS (0.99p6) package is a joke. Just getting UUCP and
CNEWS running I found alot of missing, incorrect, and misplaced files.
I fought with UUCP for two weeks and couldn't get it running. I followed
the 'Managing uucp and Usenet' book exactly and it still wouldn't work.
I then FTP'd the complete Taylor UUCP package, compiled it, and had it
running in less than 15 minutes. Obviously something was missing in the
SLS distribution.
I've just started to get CNEWS up and running. According to the docs it
is typically located in /usr/lib/news and /usr/lib/newsbin. I found it in
/usr/local/lib/news and /usr/local/lib/news/bin.
Just finding the documentation is an adventure. There was one I was looking
for (I think it was UUCP) that I found under the emacs directory. 'less'
couldn't find it's help file, it wasn't located in the correct directory.
There are many more inconsistancies that I've run into, these are just
a couple that came to mind.
You say to get a good book on running unix. Which unix? From what I have
seen there is no real standard to unix. Reading through the Nutshell
book I have I see MANY MAJOR differences in filenames, configuration, and
directory layout between the different *nix. How is someone new to Linux
supposed to know which configuration needs to be used?
---
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