I must apologize, the reply that I made yesterday was not well thought out.
When one first reads your message below, it smacks of hypocracy... you praise
the "freedom" of Linux, yet denounce anyone who who tries to teach something
different than what you know -- You speak of the evil "corperations" but doubt
anything that is not based on the "default" distro (RedHat?).
Then I went back and read you message again, as well as some of your other,
older ones on the list... and I went back and read your web site and decided
that I should apologize. It seems that you have lived in what some call the
pcdd development world (point, click, drag, drop)... You make reference to
daunting task of "trying" to compile the kernel... when to some, that is a
standard part of the install (especialy those with SMP or now I2O systems, or
specialized applications/security). To many Linux users doing ./configure --
make -- make install, is as routine as typing "setup" in Windows.
You are correct, there needs to be user friendly way of doing most of the
things that Linux can do -- and, FWIW, I am currently working with another
gentleman to write a "load n' go" firewall/proxy set-up for one of the more
popular "default" distros. Yet, we must never loose site of the "other"
way.... there always is one, users should be told that Linux can be fine tuned
and tweaked to wring every bit of performance and stability out of it... that
this is truely the most customizable OS in history!
Anyway, I give you the axe, the hole is dug -- bury away if you please. This
close to this very special time of year I find it very difficult to engage in
any sort of quabble over something this silly...
God Bless you and yours...Happy Holidays!
KLD
Morris Maynard wrote:
> OK, thanks for the pointer.
> I am not trying to upset anyone here, and I want you to know that I do think
> that it's great that you are trying to collect information and make it
> available to people.
>
> However (of course there's a however!), your site has some characteristics
> in common with much of the other online material for Linux: the information
> is poorly organized; much of it is so abbreviated as to be not very useful
> unless you already know most of it; and some of it is really outdated (for
> example, the pointer to the unfortunate "diald mini-howto").
>
> As another example, you discuss port forwarding, but don't mention the port
> forwarding modules which exist with the default distribution. Using these
> has got to be a lot simpler than trying to recompile the kernel and acquire
> and learn yet *another* utility like ipmasqadm. I have yet to find an
> application which won't work by using these, but there is almost zero
> discussion of them anywhere - and there is no orderly or complete treatment
> of them at all.
>
> I apologize for the harshness of this post, but I am not trying to attack
> anyone. I really feel that the lack of professionalism in documenting Linux
> and its utilities is a threat to the "freeness" of the operating system. If
> we don't exert the effort to be more professional (and accurate) in the way
> we present information, corporations that will come to control Linux because
> they will control the documentation.
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