[buug] Excellent Newbie Linux Site

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Zeke Krahlin (ezekielk at netzero.net):
> Rick Moen said:
>> Quoting ezekielk at iname.com (ezekielk at iname.com):

>>> http://www.control-escape.com/
> 
>> Hmm.  It suffers from Microsoft tunnel vision.  
> 
> Since the author is writing specifically for Windoze users who
> want to convert to Linux, I'd expect him to have such "tunnel
> vision". Though I know where you're coming from, I believe this
> author does a great job in providing the "missing link" for a
> smoother transition from Windoze to Linux.

There's a difference between understanding and communicating with
one's audience's mind-set, on the one hand, and perpetuating it 
on the other.  

In the medium and long term, newcomers will not bother to keep using
Linux unless they're acquainted with what's characteristically excellent
about it.  If you wanted to blind people to those excellences, 
encouraging people to see Linux in Windows terms is exactly the way
to do it.  (If anything, the trick is to help them see Windows in
Linux terms.)

>> You'll learn a lot more, more-useful things, and more quickly, from
>> reading Linux Gazette (http://www.linuxgazette.com/) the HOWTOs
>> at the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.linuxdoc.org/), and
>> good tutorial books like Matt Welsh's _Running Linux_.
> 
> So far, I don't find that to be the case. As one who truly does
> suffer from "Windoze tunnel vision", I have to say that the raw
> HOWTOs and L. Gazette toss out masses of Linux data without any
> real structure...nor do they (along with Welsh) cater to the
> ex-Windoze crowd.

The funny thing is that my Mac-programming-background fiancee 
recently complained to me that _Running Linux's_ defect was that
it was pitched at Windows users.

Looking at the documents on http://www.control-escape.com/, such
as (e.g.) the "Sharing a Drive with Windows" article, I find that
the author omits crucially needed data -- even from the strict 
utilitarian standpoint, not to mention helping almost not at all
in understanding the Linux way of thinking.

_Running Linux_ (and the better articles in _Linux Gazette_) are
good specifically because they tell you everything you most need
to know, and teach the _principles_ and general patterns that underlie 
Linux.  Those, in turn, are a great deal more useful to newcomers
than any number of "recipe" articles of the type that seem predominant 
on that Web site.

> You would have to spend a lot of time, just tunneling through such
> quantities of data (L. Gazette archives and HOWTOs), in order to find
> that one small bit information needed to perform that next tiny step
> re. installing and fine-tuning Linux.

As the old joke goes, don't do that, then.  You use search tools
and search engines, for that.

> ...Not that _Running Linux_ is not a valuable resource,...

And _Running Linux_, in similar fashion, has an extremely handy
index.

But _Running Linux_ is NOT, in point of fact, intended as a reference 
volume.  This isn't a bug; it's a feature.  _Running Linux_ is intended
to be read consecutively, a chapter or two at a time, to _teach_ you.
That is, it's a tutorial text, rather than a reference one.

It is quite endearing of O'Reilly & Associates that, in general, they
have not forgotten that computer books are _supposed_ to be either 
tutorials or references, but not attempt to be both at the same time.
That is a horrific defect of most books from Que, IDG, Macmillan, Sybex,
etc.

The best _reference_ volume I know of for Linux is _Linux in a Nutshell_, 
2nd Edition, by Ellen Siever et al.  From O'Reilly, not coincidentally.

> This "Control-Escape" site provides most answers to ease Windoze
> users into Linux...better than any other resource I have so far
> come across.

I absolutely cannot agree.  Buckle down and _read_ a few chapters of
_Running Linux_, and compare.

> Linux remains notoriously bad when it comes to organized and
> well-written HOWTO documentation...at least, when it comes to fitting
> the needs of newbies.

Complaining about software documentation has always been a popular 
pastime, but the LDP's documentation happens to be the centerpiece
in Linux's fame as the best-documented OS ever written.  Even while
it can and should be better, it has the awards to show how highly 
though of it is.

> Netscape 4.6 stinks on ice: always crashing the entire system
> just like in Windoze...forcing a hard reboot, which is not so
> nice for Linux.

Misperception.  You need only open a shell and kill it from there,
or Ctrl-Alt-F1 over to a different virtual console to do likewise,
or Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace to kill the X server.

Almost always, if you think you have to reboot to fix something in
Linux, you are mistaken (though, occasionally, I do so anyhow because
I'm being lazy).

> Learning "chmod" commands, which for some reason seems to work
> arbitrarily. IOW: as root, I can run this command:
> 
> 	chmod 777 *
> 
> in a directory, and get absolutely *no changes in permissions
> (which did not allow writing or executing for all others, and no
> execution for groups). Or "chmod 555 *", or whatever.

Either you're omitting something from the above account, or you're
doing that on a filesystem mounted read-only, or something in the 
above account is wrong -- because that does not add up.

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick (at) linuxmafia.com  modern-American-English-usage-improvement association