Hi all,


Linux has a problem, a big problem.
It lacks quality documentation. In windows tons of documetnation comes with operating systerm. But in linux you have to go out to the net to find help.

It's been long that I desired to learn Kparts (KDE programming), however, because lack of documetnation, I had to drop it. I found a few outdated tutorials which wont compile on new version of KDE. even the KDE APi documentaiton available at their site. does not have a search option. It is really dificult to browse through to find a particular class.


Most linux software, may well be better than their propieretory counterparts but, because lack of doumentaiton people ditch the software.


Some books have been released time to time, however there is no unified resource where all the documentation about linux and related software is available. The TLDP is a good beginning, but all opensource projects need to start a thing like that.
We need somehgting like MSDN, other wise linux will never break into the mainstream desktop market

MSDN is free because the users pay for the software....
why not take the money you would have spent on software, and use 10% of it to buy a book, and the other 90% to buy coffee.

that should fix things for you.

Don't you just love guys like this. How much do you pay for MS? How much for OSS?

There are quite a lot of docs. There is a lot of help on the net. There are books if you want to buy them. There are commercial developement tools if you want to buy them as well.

You are comparing apples and artichokes and this is a waste of time. Does it matter for linux to be mainstream? Are the PC dummies that MS created going to be able to handle linux anyway?

PC users of the future will be using appliances rather than the PC we know. It will be a game box or a net box or a multimedia box or an office box. It will be all that the new breed of PC user will be able to handle

The last time I bought a copy of Windows, I got absolutely 0 documentation. Well, that's not true. I got a nice, tiny ~100 page pamphlet populated with essentially fluff; like "This is the Start button", "This is the Taskbar", "This is the close button". The only saving grace for it was the certificate of authenticity on the front for two reasons:
1. It had a hologram sticker that amused me for about 10 seconds
2. It had the product ID needed to install the system

So, from personal experience, I can't see where Windows comes with anymore hardcopy documentation than Windows. In fact, many of the machines I see people buy today come with even less (if any) documentation. If you're referring to online documentation (accessible when the computer is on, but not requiring a connection to the Internet), then I don't think there's much difference in docs. I would actually argue Linux has more. Linux has man pages: documentation for every command and all of the command's nuances. The Windows "Help" feature more often than not leads me down a path to "I cannot help you with this problem". The Linux man pages may be a bit more cryptic from a technical standpoint, but if they are in error, it's an error for providing too much information. I would rather have too much than not enough.

As for the online documentation, it's odd that you say Linux requires you to go online to get docs, and then turn around and say MSDN is wonderful. I'm pretty sure you need an internet connection to access MSDN.

Your experience with Kparts is disappointing. I have usually found excellent documentation for software when I've needed it. However, generalizing an entire operating system's documentation based on one experience is not exactly fair. Would you claim Windows documentation sucks if you wanted to write an extension to the disk defragmenter tool? Well, you can't, because I have never found any documentation regarding the defragmenter or any method for interacting with it. Nor would it be fair to say Windows documentation is horrible and cite a third-party product with lacking documentation (and I've seen quite a few).

I'm not coming down on you, it just seems like you're holding Linux to a double-standard.

i find the window "help" tool also extremely unforgivable, it asks pathetic questions, if it just gave me the info i know i might be able to determine the problem (thus why linux is so nice to me, it lets me deal with it)

but i do find certain linux man/info pages very pathetic ... namely those for "kill" and the tiny x servers ,,, they do tell you how the command works, and its basic Job, but they don't tell you enough (like for the tiny xservers , they don't give you an example of how to use it (which its a long startup command as theres no real config file, and the man pages are filled with things like "width/[WIDTH]" ... its hard and for me i just gave up and went with a regular x server for my laptop) ... for the kill man page, it says like "kill -{signal}" or something like that, but it doesn't tell you what the "signal" is, or examples of either all or some of the signals ....

other docs i find are quite acquit, and some even with more info then i expected (like a brief history lesson)

all in all, linux man/info pages (and some of the installed "docs") are more then i would ever find in windows,.. almost every command has a corresponding man/info page (some don't,.. but i wouldn't expect free software made by people who do it on there time to write a doc for me .. why should they, i feel lucky if they do) .... theres even man/info pages for some libs installed (like glibc .. which can really help programmers in some cases)

Linux has the best documentation I have seen on an OS.

Are you talking about Linux or the Apps that you are using on it?

I do not recall any documentation at all about the windows kernel. unless you are talking about the stuff on the blue screen that shows up all the time.

I guess you really don't need any docs about the windows kernel because there is nothing you can do about it anyway.

As far as the apps go I did not see very many on there.

As a newcomer to Linux, I have to say that I was actually blown away by the amount of information and documentation that's available for Linux.
Most distro sites have a huge amount of docs pertaining to their software, and with a little bit of searching on things like TLDP you can usually find what you're looking for. If you actually purchase a distro from the manufacturer, then you usually get a printed manual, sometimes two or three.
Forums like this are also a great help; use the forum search feature if you can't find what you're looking for - it really works.

I'm sorry that you didn't find what you were looking for with regard to the KDE programming. Perhaps if you'd asked a question here - or searched the forums - somebody else that's experienced the same problem as you would have helped you out. If you don't ask, you don't know, right?

As a long time Windoze user, I got frequently frustrated (to the point of moving to Linux) by problems not being resolved, and getting the final cure-all answer of "re-install it" or "re-install Windoze" and that's no real solution, is it? Microshaft give out this advice in their Knowledge Base (and that's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) regularly to solve problems. No matter how much documentation Microshaft have, if the answer always comes down to "re-install it" then they might as well just have one page in their Knowledge Base saying exactly that.

http://www.tldp.org/

the linux documentation project has more stuff
than you can read in a lifetime..............do you homework before
whining.

I'm pretty new to Linux but I've gotten a lot of assistance thru people and there are a lot of docs out there. But I think the plus point to windows is that yu prolly wudn't need the documentation in the first place 4 winders cos stuff tends to work by itself. On the other hand yu get a better understanding of how stuff works on linux. The gr8 thing bout Linux is the s/w tends to give room for yu to enhance it through custom written modules or just changing the source, which although i'm a newbie I've already done on a coupla instances.

To be fair, he did mention TLDP in the original post, and said it was "a good start". I have rarely found the TLDP lacking whenever I need it, but there is a tendency to find poorly written or outdated How-Tos. My experience with Linux lets me sift through them, find the important bits, and move on. Someone new to the Linux world might come across these same How-Tos and find themselves running smack into a wall. But that's along the same lines of the technical nature of the man pages. It takes time to get used to them. When you do, a lot more doors become unlocked, and that earlier wall doesn't seem quite so high. After a while, it may even be reduced to a speed bump.

Please keep in mind that GNU/Linux is a rapidly changing OS. It's not easy to stay on top of things that change that quickly. Unlike Windows which has not really changed much in the last few years. Except for the desktop wallpaper.

true.. and its the programmers and artists that get all the glory.. not the guy who wrote an article.

it tends to break by itself too. and then give an "Error code 10: the device is not available because it is unplugged, or not functioning correctly" which helps no end !

Wait a second!!!

I was referring to the local documentation at the user's site or desktop, sure linux has great online documentation, which windows can not match.

and MSDN is also available offline in form of CDs and DVDs