On 01/24/2011 05:18 PM, Constantine Shulyupin wrote:
> Catalog of online Linux documentation
> 
> ; Summary: Catalog of online Linux documentation
> 
> ; Proposer: Constantine Shulyupin
> 
> == Description ==
> 
> Rob Landley in his article "Where Linux Kernel Documentation Hides",
> wrote in 2008:
...
> End quote.

Another question that got raised during the Q&A and which I didn't
manage to competently answer during the talk:

"Why not just use a Wiki"?

Wikis are great ways of accumulating a slush pile, but they suck at
indexing content.  How do you find anything on wikipedia?  Via Google.
Wikipedia is cross-linked out the wazoo but it hasn't even got
alphabetical topic browsing like a print encyclopedia if you wanted to
skim through to see what's there without already knowing what you're
looking for.

To give newbies a way into the material you need an obvious place to
start.  Some kind of overview you can drill down from, which turns out
to be hard to do.

> I would like to improve Linux Technology Reference:
> http://www.makelinux.net/reference .
> It is going to be comprehensive and easily accessible catalog about
> Linux, GNU, FOSS and embedded Linux for develers. It contains now 900+
> links to 100+ sites, ordered in 200+ categories. Four top level
> categories are: Linux OS - about user space system and applications,
> Linux kernel, Embedded Linux and Additional topics (design,
> documentation).
> The should be like for Linux like MSDN Library for Windows.

This is awesome, and my immediate question is long-term maintenance.
How do you add new things, how do you check old ones haven't bit-rotted,
and what happens if you're hit by a bus or sidelined by malaria for six
months.  (Note that there's never a good answer to the third one, just
less bad answers.)

> Planed improvements:
> * Adding convenient search capabilities.
> * Optionally changing catalog engine.
> * Promotion on Linux related sites.
> * Periodical updates and expanding. (The last big review was performed
> two years ego).
> * Adding feedback and link submit capabilities.

Is there a mailing list?  (I note that the kernel already has a
documentation@vger list that could be hijacked easily, it's hugely
underutilized.)

I note that the only _interesting_ bits left of kernel.org/doc (other
than the man-pages subdirectory Michael Kerrisk maintains) are the files
in the section:

  http://kernel.org/doc/#From_the_kernel

Which are updated whenever I remember to run

  http://kernel.org/doc/make/make.sh

Which calls a bunch of other files in that directory.

Oh, and I really need to get around to finishing the index for
http://kernel.org/doc/ols/2010 because that's just embarassing.  (My
script splits up the papers into individual files, but the top level
index is done by hand...)

Rob
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