Re: Open Source Knowledge Base (Linux Knowledge Base revisited)

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Andrew Wood wrote:

> existing projects doing the same thing, it was suggested that the scope be
> widened to all Open Source material - an Open Source Knowledge Base.

Bad idea IMO. One of the main problems with the HOWTOs is that they are
way to broad. The more specific, the better. It's nice to write something
general, but this requires a level of abstraction that will confuse the
hell out of newbies ( for example, newbies need to be told " install
these packages : x,y, and z with rpm -i , while you can tell an
experienced user "just install the damn thing, as well as the required
packages" ) Moreover, methods of "doing things" that work on all
distributions ( as well as FreeBSD ) tend to rely on the more
difficult command line tools ( make, tar, etc ) , as opposed to the easier
utilities ( rpm ) or the GUI tools ( eg kdeutils, Redhat control panel )  

Something fairly specific is needed. To get something that will be helpful
to a newbie, you will need to be prepared to make several assumptions ( eg
that they have KDE installed, that they have RPM, or whatever ) 

-- 
Donovan