Re: SEUL: First Impressions

["J. Otto Tennant" <jot@visi.com>]

> jghasler@win.bright.net wrote:
> 
> > Well documented and well organized text files are not at all
> > complicated.
> >          ^^^^^^^^^
> 
> This is the problem.  The current state of documentation in Linux is,
> shall we say for the well informed.  Mostly the documentation in the man
> system is for the techno-junkie (an I seem to recall someplace that it
> was intended to act as a aid to memory for the people that already had
> the several hundred (thousands?) of pages of manuals that was supplied
> for the original Unix.    Greg
> 

This is my first post to this list.  I find the volume somewhat
difficult to cope with.  I am not even certain that I have anything
to add.

However, after a weekend coping with OS/2, Windows 3.1, and Widnows 95,
I have to scream *something* at someone.

You may or may not have noticed that the "documentation" provided with
uSoft systems and OS/2 is essentially non-existent.  That the Linux
documentation is presently is not in a "consolidated" state is a
relatively minor issue compared to the utter lack of documentation for
other operating systems.

(The "documentation" of the original Unix *was* the man pages.  There
were a very few "man" pages describing the overall design.  These man
pages do occupy a good deal of shelf space when printed.)

SEUL will be a hard sell so long as the hard disk must be
repartitioned, but I think we may have to live with that.

SEUL should be "sold" as one or two boot diskettes plus a 
CD-ROM (or the FTP/NFS equivalents.)  The initial procedure
should begin by making a diskette which will restore the MBR;
if the user has the hardware, it should back-up the existing
system on a ZIP drive, JAZ drive, or tape.

(Basically, the user should be told that if the system has
some bulk back-up medium, he can always and reliably get back
to his current system.)

Personally, I do not find the RedHat installation procedure to be an
extremely difficult thing.

The chief problem is that we are missing some applications.  For
example, I was stunned to watch the Lotus 95 word processor
automatically correct a few of my simple typing errors.  AS one example,
it would have automatically corrected the "AS" to "As".  (I don't think
that would be terribly hard to add into Emacs, but that's a pretty
durned steep hurdle for the new user.)
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