At 10:01 AM -0800 11/29/00, Barley wrote:
>I want to second what was said here. The manuals are often inadequate for
>newbies. I never would have gotten qmail set up without the patient and
>generous help of those on this list. Thanks to everyone who helped me! I'm
>sure glad I wasn't raked over the coals like some of the recent posters.
At the risk of seeming to be on the side of the geek-elitist ilk on
this list, I would like to say that while they don't go out of their
way to say as such, the docs (both provided and those by other
parties as listed on qmail.org) DO assume a certain level of
knowledge about Linux/Unix as a whole, without which you undoubtedly
will get lost.
I'm not exactly a Linux newbie, but I'm far from an
expert/administrator. I'm in that "knows enough to be dangerous"
category. :-)
In my self-studies of Linux I have come across lots of reading
material. Not a lot of it sticks with me, but I do so love the
following quote and I think it says rather nicely what some of the
dinks here don't seem to be able to articulate:
----------
Any system reference will require you to read it at least three
times before you get a reasonable picture of what to do. If you need
to read it more than three times, then there is probably some other
information that you really should be reading first. If you are only
reading a document once, then you are being too impatient with
yourself.
It is very important to identify the exact terms that you fail
to understand in a document. Always try to back-trace to the precise
word before you continue.
It is usually cheaper and faster to read a document three times
than to pay someone to train you. Don't be lazy.
Don't learn new things according to deadlines. Your Unix
knowledge is going to evolve by grace and fascination, not by
pressure.
----------
I really love that. (It's from RUTE User Tutorial and Exposition,
available somewhere at linuxdoc.org.) It is good advice that a good
friend of mine is constantly drilling me with. You won't learn
anything if other people are always giving you the answers.
I installed qmail myself. Without help from this list or anyone
else. But it was NOT easy (for me). I read the docs. All of them.
Then I read them again. Then I started. And I STILL made mistakes.
I read again. I gradually found and corrected all my mistakes. Now
it works. Yay for me. But it was a lot of WORK.
But given that this was a scant two weeks ago, I'm deeply sympathetic
to others experiencing the problems I had. Maybe in a few
weeks/months after tweaking and sitting on a happy system I'll turn
into yet another callous asshole with better things to do with my
life. If I do, someone smack me.
Don't hate me for using the word "dink," :-D
...ROMeyn
--
signat-url: http://www2.potsdam.edu/dctm/prescor/signat-url.htm
cubiclecam: http://digirom.potsdam.edu/~prescor/cubiclecam.html
^^^ <--- Off-line unless someone knows how to get camserv to
compile under RedHat 7... *sigh* :-(
