"What makes GNU/Linux such a pleasure to use is the excellent documentation that is included with it for each and every tool bundled with it. Just try learning to use iptables without reading the documentation even once, and you will get the idea. The documentation in Linux is available in a variety of formats - as man pages, info, HTML pages, postscript and in some cases even pdf. But not many people are aware that you can have additional documentation and even whole books available locally for making your GNU/Linux experience that much richer. Here are a few of them that have come to my notice."
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Member since:2005-12-18
I head over to Linuxdocs.org, and I see HowTos that haven't been updated since 1997.
Actually, linuxdocs.org is the old site. The new site is tldp.org. Which stands for The Linux Documentation Project. As far as the claim that Linux has an excellent set of documentation - I second that. The only problem is that people in general are a lazy lot. Just can't pull oneself to open up the man page and read the docs.
The problem is with the people and not with linux 
Member since:2005-11-06
I agree with you that the problem is with people not with Linux _but_ only in the cases of either power-users (me, you, my boss that is a sysadmin e.t.c.) or to users with great determination and willingness to expreriment, learn e.t.c. But this kind of logic does not apply for everyday people - at least until they _do_ become powerusers. When people ask me whether they should install Linux or Windows I lower my head and advise them to get a Mac, simply because `it just works' for the most part and certainly for a much greater part than in Linux or Windows - There is nothing bad in recognizing the truth. I can't tell them `Hey, look. The documentation in Linux is awesome'. Cause it is awesome (yes) ... but for me not for them mate.
Member since:2006-01-03
> The problem is with the people and not with linux
However, nothing prevented people of, for example, FreeBSD community to create excellent man pages and update them periodically, to make a lot of other very useful docs located at /usr/share/doc, /usr/share/examples of FreeBSD installation.
Member since:2005-08-11
Whoa, there! I'm certainly no lazy user, but I've run in to dozens of programs- CLI and GUI- where the documentation was pittiful. There are a few things that are well documented. Someone mentioned Perl, for example. There are a lot of things that have decent documentation. But a lot of other things either have bad documentation, or the thing is so convoluted by design that no amount of documentation helps!
Member since:2005-12-31
Member since:2005-11-15
Member since:2006-01-04
FTFA:
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Note: In each of the cases below, I have given the package name (in bold and blue color) and you have to first install them using the apt-get command if you are using Debian Linux, which means you run the command:
# apt-get install >package name<
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I inverted the angle brackets arounf package name in order to dodge the HTML tag restrictions.
Member since:
2005-11-13
So where is all this great documentation? I head over to Linuxdocs.org, and I see HowTos that haven't been updated since 1997. How is one to tell whether something is actually up to date or not?