On Sat, 07 May 2016, David Lou <david....@outlook.com> wrote: > I wasn't able to find such a thing but perhaps I just missed it. I > am wondering if anyone in the community knows whether such manuals > exist for OpenBSD. Manpages are nice but they're not what I'm looking > for. Trying to learn OpenBSD by looking up individual manpages is like > trying to learn C programming by looking up individual functions. Sure > you get a description of the functions but you will NOT get all the > background information like C syntax, semantics, memory model, > pointers, the whole shebang that every beginner *should* know, but > don't have the background knowledge to know that they should be > looking these up in manpages or elsewhere. > > I'd like to acquire confident working knowledge in OpenBSD. If no > such manuals exist, then I'm wondering how did you or other expert > users learn how to use and administrate the system, what the best > programming practices are, etc. and have confidence that what they're > doing is what they think they're doing? Surely it's not just by > trial and error and seeing what appears to work because their > ignorance will be a frustrating source of bugs and security flaws?
Start with the FAQ. As a *BSD beginner with only Linux knowledge, I found it quite good at explaining all the basics, and the manuals (and reading misc@, including the archives!) helped to fill in the gaps. Set up a playground in Qemu or similar, or best - on some real hardware that you can spare. Try things. Do things. Break things. Fix things. Make it do something useful, like a file or game server, or use it as your desktop. Have fun! K.
