Re: Question: Registry Edit Programs

Marten Kemp wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Marten Kemp wrote:
William Munns wrote:
"Tarkin" <Tarkin000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1188556258.073678.58690@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 30, 11:43 pm, The Natural Philosopher <a...@xxx> wrote:
[attribution snippage, hope I got it right]
I disagree with one minor point- most (all?) distros come
with a manual or two- and a lot of HOWTO's and FAQ's
are available.
man man, man!

A manual which is only useful if you know what the right questions are ;)

And how to interpret the cryptic runes served up as "answers."

Indeed. There are a lot fewer good manuals than good software.

I remember thumbing through a Solaris admin manual to find the one magic string in the early days of LPadmin.. a 48 character string that magically DID enable its serial port to have a printer attached and BEGIN to work.

The trouble is the dcs are all written bt teches and are of the 'this is the wonderful features of this command' variety rather than the 'if you want to do X, here are Y steps you have to take'

The modern approach is to have te software scan the hardware and make hopefully intelligent decisions about what it should all do, and heaven help you if its guesses are wrong.

My main skillset is zVM administration and I've found that one of
the major impediments to becoming facile with Linux is the paucity
of what I'd call good manuals. Of course, having grown up with IBM
manuals, I find "good manuals" rather thin on the ground.

Some people hate IBM's manuals because they're in "IBM-ese." I
submit that the consistency and clarity of manuals written by
specialist tech writers for various audiences are superior to
manuals written by techs for other techs.

Indeed. The diffrence between 'boot from the CD' and

"Plug the machine in and switch it on with the on switch located as in diagram (1).

Push the button (see diagram (2)) that ejects the CD carrier out, and insert the supplied CD in it with the writing upwards, ensuring it is located centrally in the provided recess, and slowly push the slide home until the drive takes over and closes it for you.

Then press the reset button (diag (3)) on the machine: this will restart it and the presence of the CD will be automatically detected, and the installation sequence should begin. If not see "Appendix I - Basic hardware problems on installation"".

With digital cameras, screen capture and things like Illustrator to add words there is no excuse for manuals WITHOUT loads of pictures.
.

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