Re: debian how-to

From: "Douglas A. Tutty" Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 7:08 AM


On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 01:08:13PM +0900, David wrote:
Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
>On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 06:05:35PM -0800, Rick Dooling wrote:
>
>>I know about Debian Reference and Debian Help site, but I'm more
>>interested in a list of common how-tos that most people would like to
>>do after installation, such as add mp3 playing ability, installing
>>flash, mounting usb drives or ntfs drives and so on, the sort of
>>things found in Martin's Ubuntu How-To. I know that some work in both.
>>I guess I'm just curious if a similar thing already exists for Debian.
>>And if not would it be a useful project to redo the Ubuntu How-To with
>>an eye toward the Debian user.

>Since all the documentation is already provided on how to do each of
>these with whatever tools are installed on the user's box, the most
>important skill for the new Debian user to have is howto find and use
>the documentation.

Agreed!

And not just documentation.
I've thought a number of times that the package description aspect of
the aptitude interface should include the path of the package concerned.
Also on the Debian site package description and the documentation -
surely that makes sense.

This would help a newbie get on top of the filing scenario much more
quickly.

I remember struggling to find exactly where packages lived on my system
when I would look in a number of places and see packages with similar
names residing in a couple of them (or more).

The docs are always under /usr/share/doc/[package name]
apropos
which
locate
find

As a n00b to Debian (though I've used several distributions over the past few years) a lot of these simple things can take quite a while to figure out. For those of you who have been intimately involved and continuously using Debian it is so obvious but to the rest of us - nope.

Not all the docs are under /usr/share/doc/[package name], some are under usr/share/[package name] with no apparent rhyme nor reason. Then, everything is gzipped, should the user extract these to their home folder or is there a particular method to read these as they stand?

There are a plethora of packages that popup when you search aptitude or the other graphical package manager, which is the most common and easiest to use? should we install everything or?

Also getting the package managers to work with other mirrors or the non free or contrib, how is it done without searching for hours through documentation in an often cyclic manner.

Then there's the installation manual that gives a brief overview of the installation but few links to go to for additional resources, help etc other than the list. What about using the Rescue modes of the install CD, other than a few short paragraphs there's not much help there. I've discovered a few it's inherent limitations while fixing the messed up grub hd assignments, ended up using a knoppix DVD to do all the fixing and reinstalling of GRUB, after searching for a few hours for solutions. The grub shell won't run from the rescue mode so many of the helpful items are unavailable.

As was stated many other disto's have these n00b pages for a quick reference to get us up to speed so that we can start figuring out how to do things on our own. Many n00bs are reticient to post to lists or forums as they often receive negative feed back from some of the more seasoned users who feel like they are answering the same questions time and again.

I've yet to find anything on somehow efficiently searching archives for fixes to problems that may have already been solved. Sometimes it's just a matter of using the proper key words.

Anyways, my diatribe has gone on long enough, sorry. I'm just trying to elaborate on the need here, not asking for assistance ... yet. :)
Dave



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