H.S. wrote:
I beg to differ. There's a reason that "dummies" books and "missing manuals" sell so well. I google all the time, but it helps to have some idea of what one is looking for, and how to select from among the huge amounts of things one finds - something beginners can't be expected to know. That's one of the reasons I tend to start with Wikipedia for topics that are new to me, vs. Google for topics I know a lot about.Miles Fidelman wrote:There's still something awfully useful and compelling about a serious reference manual, all in one place, with a comprehensive table-of-contents, detailed index, and embedded references.Sure there is, but one has to keep the audience in mind. A beginner or a person just starting to find introductory information regarding current linux distros and related applications and programs is best served by google (the search is very fast and reasonably efficient) as an initial step. If one did not have today's web search engines at his disposal, it would take much longer to start getting comfortable with an OS. Once a user is past the novice/beginner stage, a reference becomes more useful. Wikis are a breed apart, no reference book can compete against this live documentation. But an internet connection becomes an absolute necessity then. Books are the best as stand alone refs, can be read almost anywhere (in a canoe, for exampe, :) ), mostly without need of any electrical power. However, it is much more faster to search for information in an electronic text document.
Re. Unix documentation:- pretty much all major distros have thorough and easy to find installation manuals (e.g., http://debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual)
- for Debian, the documentation page (http://debian.org/doc/), lists a reference manual (http://debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/), detailed maintainer and developer references, and pointers to general Linux manuals for Linux Installation and Getting Started <http://www.tldp.org/LDP/gs/gs.html>, Linux Users' Guide <http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/linux-doc-project/users-guide/>, Network Administrators' Guide <http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/nag.html>, System Administrator's Guide <http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/> (or you can go to tldp.org or http://www.debian-administration.org/). The level of maintenance of the various documents varies.
- For FreeBSD, a lot of the above is condensed into a single, well maintained document, with TOC, index, and embedded references. NetBSD takes a similar approach, though with not quite as much info combined into a single document.
Personally, I think the FreeBSD folks do the best job of accessible, up-to-date documentation of anyone in the Unix/Linux arena. They set a high standard worth of emulation, rather than excuses.
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra