discuss: Linux Documentation needs much work and ideas
Subject:
Linux Documentation needs much work and ideas
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
16 Dec 2012 09:51:06 +0000
Message-Id: <20121216095130.GA3106@davespc>
When I revised the Manifesto I added a new task for LDP: to devise a
better system for linux documentation (and not just LDP documentation).
Years ago there was a lot of discussion on this topic but no conclusions
or consensus was reached. This discussion has been long since
forgotten. And the problem hasn't been solved. In fact it may have
gotten worse since each Distribution is trying to do it's own
documentation with little available good docs from LDP to make it
easier.
One can use search engines to hunt for docs but it's not easy since
there is so much stale documentation on the Internet, including a lot
from old LDP docs. Some non-LDP docs are not even dated. A person
looking for help often will not even realize that the documentation is
out-of-date until they start trying to follow thru with it. Another
problem is that most LDP docs assume that the reader already knows a
fair amount about the topic and there isn't much that appeals to someone
who uses mainly a point-and-click interface and doesn't understand much
about so called "computer science".
On the desktop, Linux still doesn't have much more market share than it
did 10 years ago, and better documentation would help increase it's
market share. If it presented the details of differences between
distributions, perhaps some of this material could be used in the task
of making the various distributions more standardized thus enabling
persons to readily switch from one distribution to another and
simplifying documentation. Ideally, the same documentation could be
used for almost all distributions.
If LDP is not going to produce much documentation from here on, perhaps
it can try to host discussions on documentation.
David Lawyer
