On 11/01 12:42 , Sam MacDonald wrote: > It is the most upsetting thing on earth to not understand WTF the words > on a man page are trying to tell me. Then to find a HOWTO and have it > read verbatim what the man page is. if that's the case, then it: a. missed the point of being a HOWTO; which is to be more helpful and cookbook-ish than a man page OR b. there is little more to be said on the subject, and one must simply reach the necessary level of enlightenment, and it all will become perfectly clear. :) man pages are not helpfiles. They never were intended to be. Man pages convey a lot of information in a very compact format, for the sake of quick reference. Once you understand their format, they are the administrator's best friend. Admins rarely can remember everything they need to know, to do their job (and there's some argument that they shouldn't have to: why remember it when you can write it down, and save the memory capacity?) An administrator should not have to read pages of prose in order to find reference to the setting he wants (the 'chmod' man page is an example of this, IMHO -- things are bunched up into paragraphs, instead of laid out point by point). I think the reasons for the percieved learning curve and its engendered culture are: -- Unix has been taught by generations of administrators, by "special transmission outside the scriptures" (as ESR put it?). There was never any need for HOWTOs, until Linux came along, and a vast group of people suddenly had the OS, but no guru to work with daily. As such, the HOWTOs are aberrations in the Unix culture, fairly specific to Linux. -- As the article points out; Unix geeks tend to be comparatively antisocial people. Many of us were rejected from the social groups of our childhood; but now the same people who cast us out, want our help (and often still want it on their terms). We show them little more mercy than they showed us, hoping that their children will learn from the mistakes of their parents. (we will be disappointed in that tho; few people learn from the mistakes of their parents.) This is often extended to anyone who has not proven themselves as a geek yet; why should you help someone who is not smart enough or dedicated enough to help themselves, and may just be wasting your time, with no possible contribution to return? If you demonstrate willingness to try, some attempts to learn on your own, and some contributions to return, I've found that geeks are more than willing to help you uot. One could compare this to any exclusive social group -- doctors, golfers, car drivers, etc -- you can't join unless you demonstrate willingness and determination to be something resembing a valuable person who can relate to them at their level. Carl. -- Systems Administrator Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list