David's Linux Documentation Project

[David]

For a while now I've felt that there should be more documentation for the linux beginner than there is. The best guide to using linux I've found is written for debian. I thought it would be nice to write something for Fedora.

The documentation is for a computer newbie. That means that there will be no comparisons with Windows, OS X etc. If I can't explain things without refering to other OS's then I might as well not bother.

The documentation is not for dummies. There's no such thing: a monkey could learn to use a computer but, strangely enough, my far more intelligent mother has difficulties with even the smallest task. The problem imo is ignorance -> fear of the unknown. Computers aren't hard to understand and once you do everything becomes a whole lot easier. So the manual will go into detail but without sounding like a computer science professor.

Here's the basic layout I've come up with so far:

1) Bash Tutorial

You're going to have to learn it eventually so it might as well be now. I also thought it would be a good way to explain how programs work in linux (pipe) and also to give a guided tour of the system. It would generally be a nice place to learn some of the background of linux

2) Guided tour of gnome
Once the CLI stuff is covered the GUI stuff should be a breeze. Not much to do here since Gnome already has good documentation. More importantly it's a good way to introduce them to the concept of X.

3) installing new packages

I'm not sure whether to include up2date and Add/Remove Applications (Redhat-config-packages) here or in the chapter above. Either way, they're both fairly self explanatory so descriptions on how to use them will be brief.

It'll really start with yum and its common uses. I'll mention the unofficial faq here as well since it has a nice yum.conf.

After yum comes rpm because that's where you'd have to go next if you can't find a program at the yum repository. This is where I'll explain what rpms are, how they work and how they relate to redhat.

Now we go back to yum and have a look at yum.conf. I want to give an explanation of how this works so that users can add repositories if they need to.

Finally we delve into compiling source code and maybe even building rpms (once I've gained some experience doing this myself :p)

4) Shell Scripts

They're used by installers, config files etc and you're bound to come across them sooner or later so it's a good idea to be able to understand them if you ever need to read or even edit them. Will probably include, or start with, a basic tutorial.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that's it!

I realise that the whole thing is quite CLI intensive but that's ok because (well designed) GUIs are intuitive anyway and users can usually work them out on their own. Personally, I use a combination of both interfaces and I suspect most linux users are the same.

The idea is to lead with practical examples and then explain them afterwards with the theory, perhaps hinting at things covered later in the tutorial. The whole tutorial should provide quite a lot of background to how linux and fedora works and, most importantly, give the end user confidence in using the OS.

Any thoughts/input/insults apreciated. I've just realised that I haven't even mentioned run levels or rescuing linux using the bootCD or creating boot diskettes etc. Any other things that I've left out?

Thanks for any feedback/participation. :)

[tux2furious]

you have just mentioned a few things that i had in mind to put in my guide...

[JonR]

Looks good but I wonder if you should ignore users migrating from other OSs altogether. How many newcomers to Linux began with Windows? (Possibly without ever running up a DOS CLI.)

[Ug]

I hope you're going to publish it under a creative commons licence (http://creativecommons.org/).

[foolish]

Great initative, I hope you have the wits to join forces with the resources already out there. We don't need yet another resource really.

In fact, I'm writing on something like what you're talking about just now. Let's work together.

[David]

Thanks for the interest guys. Glad to see I'm not the only one who's been having these thoughts.

JonR>>Looks good but I wonder if you should ignore users migrating from other OSs altogether. How many newcomers to Linux began with Windows? (Possibly without ever running up a DOS CLI.)

Fair point but I think that they would probably recognise the things being discussed anyway. On the other hand, telling somebody that the Bash shell is a bit like the DOS prompt isn't going to be helpful to anyone who hasn't used the DOS prompt. But then it might benefit DOS users to make that comparison. Hmm, maybe I'll be less rigorous about that one but it will remain the case that this should be easy enough for a person with no computing experience whatsoever to grasp. It will therefore be assumed that the reader has no computing experience.

Anyway, this might be the case in a couple of years time if more computers are shipped with linux.

Ug>>I hope you're going to publish it under a creative commons licence.

I'll read that link later when I'm a bit less tired. Of course I'll make it freely available and will encourage others to proof read, correct and suggest revisions, new content etc. I'll keep it true to the spirit of open source but I'd like to keep control of what goes in and how it's written myself though, or at least have a say over what goes in if I'm working with someone else, like Sindre. Only because I think it's much easier to read something that comes from the pen (keyboard?) of one person than of many. If there's 8 different people contributing 8 different writing styles combined with 8 different teaching methods it might be harder for the reader to take in. That'll be something to consider in a joint project.

Foolish>>Great initative, I hope you have the wits to join forces with the resources already out there. We don't need yet another resource really.

Yes, I thought about that. I will try not to overlap with other tutorials too much. I'll also try to reference further reading material. This is going to be available on the web so there will be many other resources to choose from. I would like it to stand up well on its own though. I actually had a distro based tutorial in mind when I thought this up. As in, something that would be installed as part of fedora, like a getting started manual, and therefore not have to rely on web resources since the user might not be connected to the net in the first place (plus urls can become invalid over time). But this is thinking very far ahead. I have to write a good tutorial first! :P

>>In fact, I'm writing on something like what you're talking about just now. Let's work together.

Sounds like a good plan. I think our goal is the same. I'll pm you with some feedback on the your rpm tutorial and we can see if our two approaches will compliment each other.