From: sno@ais.org (Stephen Opal)
Subject: Annoying Linux developer habits.
Organization: UMCC
Distribution: wo
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 15:39:19 GMT

Before I start to ragg on my pet peeve, let me say a great big thank you
to the Linux developers and community.  This has been a terrifically
educational experience and a wonderful challenge of experimentation,
failure, and success.  Just the type of thing I was hoping for when I
chose Linux to be my future system of choice.  The availability of Linux
is what caused me to choose buying a 486 motherboard in my upgrade path
from the Amiga (which I still use and love!).  Linus and all the
"distributors", utility hackers, and driver support people have my utmost
gratitude for a project that seems to be coming together nicely.

Now my whiney complaint!  It seems that many documentation people love
their TeX and Postscript so much that they forget that most of us are
just 486 people who need explicit directions on how to assemble our
systems.  Exotic text run-off formats inhibit that dramatically.  Lilo
is only distributed with postscript documentation.  Several other packages
have made their "current" documentation only available in TeX.  Us Newbies
don't need that, and just can't handle it!  I don't have TeX or Postscript
installed on my system yet, and I do not have any facility available to
me that does.

WE NEED ASCII!!!  One of the biggest complaints in this newsgroup is from
people chastising users who can't seem to read the available info/faq.  I
think we could go a long way in minimizing this "problem" by making the
current documentation available to the lowest common denominator.

Whew!

On another related note... It appears that documentation is spread all
over the internet directory tree.  A smattering in this directory, another
smattering in that.  A directory tree that seems to have been formed
more than a year ago and never modified for current needs.  So, I am
constantly searching directory trees on tsx-11 and other systems to find
miscellaneous pieces of code.  I am always extremely greatful when someone
posts an "upload notice" that states an explicit path, because once again
I get to go directly to yet another unseen tree.  Without that explicit
path, I might spend hours trying to find one piece of binary or code.

We should assemble all the "general need to know" docs at root.  Then each
package would have their own explicit installation/description documents.
Besides, some of these directories need some housework done on them.
10 to 15 revisions of the same software doesn't help me.  It just scrolls
my screen off at the top, and I lose all those README filenames.  

If we really want people to read those very informative words, we need to
make them the first thing they see, and the main thing they want.  It is
against our best interests, forcing users to scour remote archive sites
and making them search through 100's of directories for snippets of 
information.


Again, let me say that I am extremely appreciative of this entire project.
Support individually and as a group is par-excellant!  Not a day goes by
that I don't read *something* new and useful to me in comp.os.linux.  I'm
*always* finding wonderful new information to use.  Thank you all for
a good job and a strong support level.  Without you, Linux might be just
another opsys.  I truly appreciate the hours hackers and developers need
to take to keep their respective projects updated and easy to install.

I understand that this is an all volunteer effort!  I don't wish to ragg
on that at all.  Let's just take a breath and remember that some of the
things you take for granted may be way over the head of some of us
newbies.  More and more Unix illiterates will be visiting now that this
system is available and packaged so nicely.  A little effort now will
go a long way to avoid developer burn-out later.

-- 
Stephen N. Opal     sno@umcc.ais.org
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux