Linux documentation

Fair warning: I probably won't be speaking kindly about the generous efforts put forth by the Linux/FOSS community; I consider the document creators as important as the coders. Equal to the coders, in fact. Before you discredit me, think about what I might already know. Think about my history, which will be revealed as I go. I believe there is a lot of sincere effort being put forth in developing FOSS. I also think that any bum off the street is absolutely NOT qualified to create accurate and thorough documentation.

Lets find the middle ground.

I'll start with Mandriva 2008, which just got seeded to the mirrors a few days ago; I've managed to download a copy of the x86_64 DVD.

Oh. Believe it or not, I'm already getting ahead of myself.

My system is almost a year old. Nothing superduper, just a uniprocessor Celeron D 3.33 GHz processor in a 64bit ECS motherboard. The mobo has onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics (kinda like a notebook or a laptop would have), and that is what I'm using to drive my Viewsonic Optiquest Q9B 19" LCD. System has 1 Gig of DDR2, 128 megs of that is used for the ATI graphics. Onboard Realtek sound, 'AC 97 compliant. I also have a Happauge WinTV-Go in the system, but XP64 can't use it.

Aside from that, I have a 120 Gig drive partitioned for XP and Linux, and a 40 Gig Maxtor intended to serve as a user drive, under /home/user. An external 120 Gig USB2.0 drive for archives. Oh, and a Logitech Trackman wheel. I get RMS from mice.

So, lets see how well documented this FAMOUS Linux distribution really is.

Before I decided to revisit Mandriva (I last booted Mandrake 9.1 a few years ago), I did the honorable thing. I read the documentation.

First question: Will my system be good enough for installation? the version I want to use is x86_64, it only comes as a DVD ISO9660 image. I have DSL (Finally!), so I can probably get it downloaded.

Before I downloaded it, I looked for documentation. What does this distro need?


I searched the FTP repository on the mirror listed by a Mandriva user.

I opened this document:
which is in the supposedly current x86_64 directory AND it internally is titled 'Mandriva Linux 2008'.

It says:
1] Pentium basic is not x86_64 architecture. Pentium II and Pentium III are also
NOT compatible with a 64 bit distro.

2] a CDROM drive is all that is needed, but we are installing from a 4.5+ gigabyte ISO? Oops. Somebody is gonna have a hard time burning that to a CDR. And if they manage to burn the DVD.... how will a CDROM system BOOT from it?

3] 64 meg recommended...... Right. Find me a GUI on this DVD that runs on 64 megs.


[sarcasm]So far, so very good. EXCELLENT documentation!
Worthy of praise, worthy of trust, place faith in this document and ALL other Mandriva Linux documents![/sarcasm]

I believe Mandriva has offered a DVD ISO for over a year. Nobody fixed this in over a year? Nobody MENTIONED about it to documentors in over a year? Nobody READ it in over a year?

Seriously, which Linux newbie feels that document is accurate? And when YOU were a newbie, would you continue reading THAT document under the circumstances I've outlined? Now before you post, forget about what you already know about Linux, I've clearly presumed a newbie would take issue there. For that matter, I personally take issue with that document: What other portions are going to be wrong, and will I be able to tell right from wrong in the portion of that document which I'm reading on some later date?

Part one, completed.