Interesting Video About What Documentation Used to be Like
Posted by SpongebobFan1994@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 50 comments
I've been following Veronica Explains for the last few months, and I came across a video she made with the Taylor and Amy Show about what documentation used to be like in the 80s and how different or non-existent it is now. It would be nice if we had more documentation like this, especially for new to Linux users who are trying to learn but get trashed in forums for the most basic things. https://youtu.be/4lUiUQOvRHQ
EnUnLugarDeLaMancha@reddit
In the Linux universe, there has been a regression in the latest decades. Many Linux users won't probably even know TLDP (The Linux Documentation project - https://tldp.org/)
This project used to be the documentation source that every Linux user would use when they wanted to do something. You know nothing about Linux and want to learn the basics? Read https://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/intro-linux.html (this was turned into printed books). You want to know about partitioning? Then read https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/index.html
When Wikis and the modern web (forums, etc) became more popular, people started contributing more to them, because it was easier and simpler (TLDP uses complex document formats like SGML). This encouraged the creation of distro-specific wikis.
Gentoo became the most important one. Then, after the great Gentoo wiki disaster, the Arch one somehow become more popular. But it is not (and cannot be) what the TLDP was (eg. there is no equivalent of an "Introduction to Linux"). And in any case, documentation completely misses the point of modern uses, who often want a youtube video. I'm not sure it's possible to fix the current situation.
ang-p@reddit
My intro to bash was through Machtelt (or Tille) Garrels'
Bash Guide for Beginners- an amazing resource.Sent her an email of thanks and got a lovely response.
cp5184@reddit
Generally in other ways too, AMD is being less open about basic things like pinouts and other documentation, going back to the first ibm pc it was extensively documented with I think circuit diagrams and register documentation.
By the late 1990s that documentation had changed to basically "it's a computer".
Heck. Ram companies have started trying to hide timings.
VelvetElvis@reddit
When everyone was still on dialup, the main source was man pages, info pages, and the contents of /usr/share/doc. At least in Debain land, there's never been a reason to go beyond what's installed on your system for documentation.
Routine_Aardvark_314@reddit
I remember reading through the NAT HOWTO when I was first getting started. Those HOWTOs were excellent.
Postcard2923@reddit
They definitely helped me! I was on dialup in a house with five other roommates and only one phone line back in 1998.
Routine_Aardvark_314@reddit
From memory, there was a PPP HOWTO which went through how to get connected via modem. Great memories. I had a 'windows' modem, which meant I had to boot windows, then reboot to get linux to see it.
Postcard2923@reddit
Yep, that PPP HOWTO was clutch.
jkl1100@reddit
damn i wish something like tldp was still getting updated. the arch wiki is more of a manual and less of a learning resource
CrazyKilla15@reddit
Does that thing still get any updates??
Sirius707@reddit
What happened?
dengess@reddit
Hard drive failure of a unofficial wiki without adequate disaster recovery strategy
rileyrgham@reddit
The arch resources pee all over the others these days. Excellent resource.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Yep, even if you don't use Arch is a wonderful resource.
BoltLayman@reddit
The problem is that nobody pays for that.
Actually the "documentation" process is the half of the engineering art. and talent. When a creator is able to explain to others what his brain farts and what kind of a shit heap has been just dropped from his workshop on the consumers' floor.
Take a look at old Unices general books and official books from vendors, they were pricey, but at least users were supposed to work with that in offline mode and maybe later contact vendor's support service via phone line or email.
ExerciseNo@reddit
😅😅😅 It's quite a shit show
BoltLayman@reddit
I am sure that mostly software development looks like that.
ExerciseNo@reddit
So much for our creativity 😆😆😆
Standard-Potential-6@reddit
It's the biggest advantage some (all?) of the BSDs have over Linux these days, in my opinion. They offer complete systems with complete documentation, though improvements are always possible.
I recommend OpenBSD to anyone needing a minimal server. It's an interesting breath of fresh air from the conventions of Linux, and the manual pages are comprehensive and (relatively) welcoming.
triemdedwiat@reddit
Sorry, documentation hasn't changed and it NEVER catered for newbies.
The only change has been a format changed from printed sheets in folders to online PDFs.
Pixelfudger_Official@reddit
The TI-99 manual in the video explains what the spacebar is (including a color photo of the keyboard and a box surrounding the spacebar).
How is that NOT for newbies?
eriomys@reddit
who has patience to read nowadays...
VelvetElvis@reddit
I love the terseness of man pages.
jr735@reddit
That's all true, but no one wants to pay for or ship documentation these days. I have binders for my old computers. Debian does have a users guide you can actually install, plus there are man pages.
Back then, a typo or something grossly wrong in the documentation was also a lot harder to correct.
NeverMindToday@reddit
Yeah, stuff just wouldn't get corrected. I do remember the AmigaBASIC book that came with my Amiga 500 in the late 80s having hilariously inaccurate descriptions of what an instruction was supposed to so vs what it actually did or didn't do. It was written by MS though, and those bugs never got fixed - my first experience of MS software.
But imagine the printed documentation for a modern computer and OS written to the same level of detail those old 8 bit manuals were - it would fill a bus. Computers were a lot simpler back then.
jr735@reddit
There were some things where you could send in an address card and if there were errors significant enough, they'd send out correction sheets, at least with the Radio Shack. But that was incredibly uncommon. When I got my Amiga 500, I wasn't consulting the AmigaBASIC manual as much as I would have had it been a few years earlier. I had learned enough to muddle through for what little I actually needed the language.
These days, it absolutely would be more of an issue. Even documenting all the coreutils would fill a binder easily, I suspect.
They still can do better than they are. Having an appropriate legend of plugs on the back of the computer would be helpful. Far too many times the thing is against a wall, and you pull it away from the wall and try to figure out what's what, with barely legible hieroglyphics stamped into the steel.
Most of the manuals we got in the day were operating system manuals, and there's no way in hell MS is going to ship a printed, comprehensive manual these days. Do they even make an online manual available?
jthill@reddit
Oh, God, somebody stop me.
If the plural of manual is menual, what's the act of writing menuals?
nhaines@reddit
menstruction?
NeverMindToday@reddit
menual labour
NeverMindToday@reddit
Even in the mid 90s, you'd get extensive physical docs. MS Office 4.3 and AutoCAD R13 came in a box with about a 50cm stack of books.
Postcard2923@reddit
The IBM AS/400 manuals were incredible. We had an entire shelf for them
ZorakOfThatMagnitude@reddit
My first book on linux was Mark Sobell's A Practical Guide to Linux, 1st ed, picked primarily because Torvalds wrote the forward for it. For a newbie, it was nice because it kept to the basics. It'd talk about the various shells(bash, csh, tcsh, maybe korn?), how to configure your prompt, some basic admin stuff, maybe even X and Gnome. Then the back half was essentially a printout of the shell commands for each of the major shells. I still have it around because some of his command descriptions were slightly better than the man pages at the time.
siodhe@reddit
While Linux's coverage of commands isn't a thorough as many Unix systems were, "man" is still the best way to check for into on the vast majority of commands and system on Linux, with the added advantage of describing the exact version you have installed on your system. Some man pages are amazingly detailed. "man bash" is especially notable, but not isolated.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Pretty accurate. Then you had the opposite with IBM documentation, which was a massive amount of information written more like a thesis.
xkcd__386@reddit
This comment intentionally left blank
(people who used IBM manuals will get it)
rileyrgham@reddit
The red and white books. Very hard to get hold of in the day.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Worked for an IBM partner. Had to read through a lot of them.
Galopigos@reddit
My condolences.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
lol indeed
Galopigos@reddit
Those were such fun, Read through 10 pages of text just to find the answer was really, hit the enter key and 5 at the same time! Had a friend who worked in Endicott during the heyday of the company. Guy was a genius when it came to computers, the rest of life, not so much.
DynoMenace@reddit
I watched this the other day, it was delightful. And I totally agree with them, documentation ranges from crappy to nonexistent these days.
Galopigos@reddit
You should try the automotive world. Some companies still have all the info out there, others charge both arms and a small child for it. Then once you have it you discover that it was correct for the first half of production but the updates changed things or worse you discover that they are outright wrong. Especially with the Korean imports. Makes me long for the cars of the early 70s, one fuse box, maybe 10 fuses and not a cpu in sight...
DynoMenace@reddit
I work in the auotmotive world, so don't worry, I'm painfully aware of how bad documentation is across the board!
Galopigos@reddit
These days most folks write up documentation and put it online, BUT they don't consider that to get to it you need to get online first! The other issue is that with all the different distros it's hard to have one "book" to cover them all. That is also one of the reasons why Linux doesn't end up being a major desktop item, so many distros and custom versions. If they wanted to the community could take over the market easily, Just pick one distro and hammer all the bugs and driver issues out across the entire distro. Like say Ubuntu, if everyone started running only that and worked out all the bugs they might just get people outside the IT and geeks to leave windows and run that OS. Especially if they built it to run on most hardware, Think what MS would do if one OS came out and said "Hey do you have an old computer that was running windows XP? Well our OS will run on that without any effort. It will also run on the most modern bleeding edge hardware as well, all in a single system." MS would crap their pants!
jr735@reddit
Who should pick one distro? You say Ubuntu, and I say never. There's one fork already.
Let's be realistic. The average computer user can't install Windows. If they don't have a pre-installed operating system, they have a boat anchor.
Galopigos@reddit
Maybe that is your take on things but I know of a lot of folks who can install windows because it literally walks you through the process and sets itself up. Then they install the games and office software used by other windows users. Now if they have to choose between that or 20 different distros and research which ones do what and run on which hardware, what will the choose? Windows or Mac. Why, it is 100000 times easier to use for people who have never seen a command prompt or a terminal emulator. Notice that the companies that offer linux pre installed don't brag about it and wash their hands of it when it is purchased? I started out in machine language and have played under the hood of most of them since, ran linux until it finally annoyed me enough that I switched to windows.
jr735@reddit
I know lots of people who can, too. But the average computer user won't be able to do it. They don't know the difference between operating systems and programs.
I've been doing Linux for 20 years trouble free. I always get skeptical that nominal sysadmins and ML programmers can't run it on the desktop.
Galopigos@reddit
And yet you expect them to be happy with Linux as the OS when it rarely runs smooth unless you go through and tweak it to run on your system, then change some program and have to tweak it again. That is the reason I stopped using it. I got sick of needing to hunt down or write a driver for hardware that wasn't supported or needing to go in and recompile code because some change in a program caused a problem. You like it that way, I don't and neither does the average computer user, They want to power the machine on, go play games or surf the web and not need to keep doing changes on the software just to keep it running.
You like it and that's great, however if it's so good, why doesn't it dominate the desktops in the world? Yea it is in servers and runs a lot of other areas of the web and other devices, but it isn't on many desktops.
jr735@reddit
I have no expectation for anyone else's happiness. It's not my problem. In twenty years, I haven't had to do any of these tweaks or recompile code. None of those experiences mirror my own. I don't know what distributions you chose, but I've rarely seen a Mint or Ubuntu install that needs any tweaking whatsoever.
It doesn't dominate desktops because we have a company that has been spending the last 30 plus years trying to ensure that no one would have a choice when buying a desktop. MS found out that simply installing OEM was enough. The average computer user cannot install any operating system.
In can run Trisquel out of the box. I'm not sure where the difficulty lies.
fliberdygibits@reddit
I've been using linux for years but I still find myself in the middle of a learning curve on occasion. It drives me nuts when you try asking online and get the "Have you tried reading the documentation?" reply. Yes... yes I have .... and it gave me brain spasms.