On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, L. C. Robinson wrote: > On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Gil Andre wrote: > > .... But Slackware has the best man pages of any > > Linux distro, bar none. Which is why I like it. > > For anyone who knows how distributors necessarily have > to work, this appears a highly dubious claim. Most > documentation, of any type, comes with the actual > program packages, which are simply repackaged by a > distributor, with some (usually minor) adjustments for > their configuration. The rest of the man pages are > likely to come from the LDP project man-pages package. > For instance, the slackware web page lists their > version of man-pages (called manpages by them), as > "Man-pages 1.38", but my Red Hat 7.3 system has version > (shows): > rpm --query man-pages > man-pages-1.48-2 and, for what it's worth, on Red Hat 8.0 we have: [summer@orange summer]$ rpm -qa man\* man-pages-1.53-1 man-1.5j-11 [summer@orange summer]$ Apart from the man-pages packages, the other documentation that ships with a packages is what the author(s) provide. I have not used Slackware for some years, and for that reason have been ignoring the discussion. However, I don't think it likely any distribution will have significantly better man pages than any other because, if one puts a lot of work into it, within months they all have the changes. That's a direct consequnce of the GPL. On my RHL systems I see stuff that originated in Debian, and in Debian I see software originating from Red Hat including kudzu. > > And none of this is likely to affect a newbie anyway, > in the least. Perhap they're more important to the blind - I gather a fair number here are using commandlines and not guis. However, what _IS_ important is the easy of installation, and the ease of maintenance including applying all the latest fixes. I've not used the Red Hat Network and the attendant up2date facility, but by all accounts it makes it pretty easy to keep yourself up to date. The major drawback, and the reason I don't use it, is that it downloads all updates from Red Hat's servers and not from more convenient mirrors. All three of the major distributions have good reputations as being easy to install, _but_ I don't know how that applies to blind users as the reports I see all refer to the ease of using the GUI installer. I've also used Debian's installer and it's a royal pain. It's not so much that it's hard (for me, an experienced computer person familiar with another distribution of Linux) to use as it tediously interrupts the install process with the configuration process. I could comfortably install 100 RHL systems tomorrow (or at least, make a decent dent in the process while I hunt round for more networking gear), but for the moment Debian defeats me. However, once it's installed, it's easy to add a new package to Debian: apt-get install -y sendmail and it will locate the latest version appplicable to my system, download it (and other required software) if necessary and install it. Red Hat linux is notwhere near that easy. >From what I hear, Slackware doesn't have package managament at all. If so, it really can't be recommended for general use. > > > Another good reasons the BSDs are better than Linux: > > updated man pages -- documentation, the UNIX way. > > All those who provide man pages at all use UNIX > conventions (meaning the man macros and format), > regardless of *ix flavor. > > And new users need to realize that the end user will > see little difference between BSDs and Linux, and even > some proprietary versions of *ix. Why? Because they > all use the the same code base for the GUI and desk-tops, > and even most of the utilities and many of the > development tools, and they try to follow the same > standards, more or less. I had a play with FreeBSD some time ago. Many of the utilities look to be the same as the ones I've used for years, but in fact they're not. Linux comes with a lot of GNU software, with GNU software I can type commands such as ls * -rt On FreeBSD this doesn't work. It uses the BSD source base, and (assuming the switches are the same) I have to type ls -rt * Since I often backup and modify a command this is an important difference. I'm currently planning on having a look at NetBSD. I note that one of the changes in 1.6 is the replacement of GNO sort with a different one. I guess the two are different in some important way. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list