Paul Johnson wrote:
Chris Jones wrote:On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 06:12:35AM EDT, Dotan Cohen wrote:Check out the FreeBSD handbook at: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ It is also available as a pdf which is >1000 pages! It doesn't cover everything, but it does cover a lot. They also have other books and articles at http://www.freebsd.org/docs/books.html.That sounds more like a problem than a solution. I would not try an OS that had a 1000 page manual. I want simple, not comprehensive.
Actually, it's a great example.It's a reference manual, not a getting started book - and like any reference manual it tries to have everything you might possibly need, but isn't designed to be read cover-to-cover - including everything from an introduction to Unix to installation to administration, with a comprehensive table of contents and index. Sort of like combining the Debian installation instructions, an introduction to Unix, basic user commands, and a sys admin manual, into one document.
1000 pages is also an exaggeration. Take a look at it before you start bashing it.
Now Mac OSX, on the other hand is a lot more modern, with full-blown Unix underpinnings (BSD flavored). (Sure makes it easy to go back and forth between a Mac laptop and a Debian server farm).I don't know about their more recent consumer-grade offering but you may want to take a look at Windows '98. When I got the laptop, it came with a 20-page or so manual. But then considering the "capabilities" of the OS that was probably overkill anyway.That wrongly assumes anything Windows is a modern OS, when in reality it's just a rehash of the worst ideas CP/M and VMS had to offer.
Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra