On Monday 02 June 2003 17:04, Togan Muftuoglu wrote:

* James Mohr; on 02 Jun, 2003 wrote:

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Hmmmmm. Obviously you are not refering to the HOWTOs. They are intended to explain HOWTO do something and thus are tutorial in nature and not just reference. Although I would agree that the man-pages are references, "most" of the documentation I am aware of it tutorial in nature and not just for reference. So much stems from the time when there wasn't any documentation on how to do things so people wrote *tutorials* telling you how.

I would rate the current Linux Howto's as "Here is how I did it" they are far away to be called as tutorials.

Maybe, but they are much closer to being tutorials than pure reference. A tutorial tutors you (i.e. teaches you something). Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums are subject to reposting.

On Monday 02 June 2003 18:27, malcolm wrote:

On Monday 02 June 2003 17:01, James Mohr wrote:

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On Monday 02 June 2003 12:15, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

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* Sun, 01 Jun 2003, jsowden@americansentry.net:

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These are admin tasks, not Joe Luser's

Sorry, but if I were a newbie, or a simple user of Linux I would be insulted by that comment. It is extemely demeaning to refer to someone as a "looser" simple because they are "only" a user. It is the apparent elitist attitude that many seem to have that turns a lot of people away from Linux. I feel that such terms and your overall attitude are very condescending.

I have been trying to learn English for 66 years.

In England, "looser" usually seems to refer the tightness of the rope that our glorious politicians put round your neck, before the floor opens, if we do not use windose (American spelling).

Actually it was a typo. It was supposed to be "loser", but your point is well taken.

One report stated that the Microsoft licence fees paid by the UK government last year increased by £66,000,000.

A lot of confusion would be removed from emails to this list if people spelt out the full words of say CLI, then used the abreviation later in the email.

Another problem is the use of local word meanings.

How many of the subscribers to this group know what "snap" means near a coalmine in Yorkshire.

Or better yet, the difference between "pissed" in the US and in the UK. Even if we speak the same language there are often differences in vocabulary or even interpretation of meaing. For example, I have always seen "luser" used as a play on the word "loser" and meant to be derogatory. Obviously I was not the only one who had this interpretation. However, there are others with different interpretations. Which is why we need to be aware that there are communications problems and not simply expect that every knows the "language". Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums are subject to reposting.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 02 June 2003 9:01 am, James Mohr wrote:

On Monday 02 June 2003 12:15, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: [...]

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These are admin tasks, not Joe Luser's

Sorry, but if I were a newbie, or a simple user of Linux I would be insulted by that comment. It is extemely demeaning to refer to someone as a "looser" simple because they are "only" a user. It is the apparent elitist attitude that many seem to have that turns a lot of people away from Linux. I feel that such terms and your overall attitude are very condescending.

I've never felt comfortable with the term "luser" either -- it usually strikes me as yet another badly-spelled "1337 5p3ak haxor vocab" term until I remember it supposedly stands for "<L>ocal <USER>" or some such not-as-derogatory term... - -- Yet another Blog: http://osnut.homelinux.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) Comment: http://osnut.homelinux.net/TomEmerson.asc iD8DBQE+23ypV/YHUqq2SwsRAr02AKCHEp85r2gYiS1uZE9aZVmJa6xidQCfewFA NBbZKjm5+4Dghbhp/gQjL3E= =CfXH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

* Mon, 02 Jun 2003, suse_mailing_list@jimmo.com:

On Monday 02 June 2003 12:15, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

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* Sun, 01 Jun 2003, jsowden@americansentry.net: <snip>

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I am a newbie at this, and one of my complaints has been the use of the 'nix language to explain something. Consider giving your text, section by section, to someone who has never used Linux. Have them read your text, then explain to you how to perform the task described. There are technical nouns used in explaining that are used a verbs, leaving the newbie lost.

It's not only Unix/Linux, every specialization has it's own dictionary of wtf-s and [e]tla-s. Newbies just have to get used to it, and use the available help to get into the 'scene'. You can't expect a 30 year old specialization to change its habbits because newbies feel lost (a medicine course doesn't change the Latin words into english for new med students either).

I have to disagree with you a little on this one. For example, it is common to say things "cat the file", which for a newbie is very confusing because they are not aware of the fact cat is a command and that the expression means to "display the contents of the file using 'cat' command". Yes, if we choose we can continue to speak in terms that the average use does not understand, thus loosing many to Windows where you don't need that special vocabulary.

But that special vocabulary is *part* of the thing you try to teach. It isn't an "option" to use it or not, it's *unavoidable*. Your example is flawed btw; cat is not a command to show the contents of a file, it is a command to concatenate files to stdout.

Also I think your example of a "medicine course" in appropriate. If I were a first year medical student, then I would not expect the professors to change the vocabular. However, the better comparison would be a freshmen biology course. Yes, in such cases, the vocabular **is** changed in order to ensure that it is at the level of most of the students.

Why is the your comparison better then mine? Should I use another example, like a foreign language course where the material is taught in the lingo it is about?

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often you must execute a command to put the new config data into play. This needs to be explained.

These are admin tasks, not Joe Luser's

Sorry, but if I were a newbie, or a simple user of Linux I would be insulted by that comment. It is extemely demeaning to refer to someone as a "looser" simple because they are "only" a user. It is the apparent elitist attitude that many seem to have that turns a lot of people away from Linux. I feel that such terms and your overall attitude are very condescending.

As others explained, 'luser' is not ment in a insulting way, it is just a term used for (mainly Unix) users who (have to) rely on a sysadmin for administrative jobs.

Second, Linux expects the user to be much more of an administrator than Windows. Therefore, knowing that simply changing a configure file is not sufficient is something that a newbie should be told. How else are they going to know.

If the user is going to his/her own admining then yes, of course they need to know, but this knowledge is much more part of "know your applications" than "know Linux", because there are lots of different ways in which apps can react to a SIGHUP, or SIGUSR1 or whatever.

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Finally, as we all know, this operating system has more documentation than any other to date (afaik). Lots of doc does not mean that a newbie can understand it.

Most of which is written as reference, not as tutorial. A man-page of bash does NOT teach anyone how to use bash, just where to find some (hidden) option to change bash's behaviour.

Hmmmmm. Obviously you are not refering to the HOWTOs. They are intended to explain HOWTO do something and thus are tutorial in nature and not just reference. Although I would agree that the man-pages are references, "most" of the documentation I am aware of it tutorial in nature and not just for reference. So much stems from the time when there wasn't any documentation on how to do things so people wrote *tutorials* telling you how.

Even HOWTOs do not teach people the indepths about something they try to accomplish, just the commands to get the job done. Another situation, with another distro or OS like FreeBSSD and the HOWTO can be totally useless because it doesn't explain exactly *why* it does the things in that particular way.

Besides it does not change John's comment that a large amount of documentation does not necessarily mean a newbie can understand it. Therefore, I fail to see the value of your comment.

I was more or less adding to his point. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 13 27N , 4 29 45E. SuSE 8.2 x86 Kernel k_Athlon 2.4.20-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

* Wed, 04 Jun 2003, suse_mailing_list@jimmo.com:

On Tuesday 03 June 2003 21:23, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

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As others explained, 'luser' is not ment in a insulting way, it is just a term used for (mainly Unix) users who (have to) rely on a sysadmin for administrative jobs.

Also "As others explained" there are interpretations where it is considered insulting. As Anders pointed out:

/loo'zr/ A {user}; especially one who is also a {loser}. ({luser} and {loser} are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at {MIT}.

So, before we turn this into a flame war, it would be beneficial if you did not take just those posts that support your position and simply ingore the rest.

I hope I don't have to start using "Politically Correct" speech and watch my words because of (too) long toes on this list. I'm not taking or ignoring anything, I just gave my own interpretation, and thought that others gave the same meaning to the term.

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Second, Linux expects the user to be much more of an administrator than Windows. Therefore, knowing that simply changing a configure file is not sufficient is something that a newbie should be told. How else are they going to know.

If the user is going to his/her own admining then yes, of course they need to know, but this knowledge is much more part of "know your applications" than "know Linux", because there are lots of different ways in which apps can react to a SIGHUP, or SIGUSR1 or whatever.

Just what are you getting at? If you want to say Linux is just the kernel (which would be completely accurate) then it was my mistake to say this is a class on Linux. However, if we take your approach and use the *common* jargon of this mailing list, then Linux is also all of the application that a provide with any given distribution. Thus, knowing that sending a SIGHUP to certain "applications" (i.e. deamons) will get them to re-read the configuration file.

If that is the common jargon then I don't agree, no. Linux *is* more then just the kernel of course, but it certainly does not encompass all the apps on the CDs. Knowing a 'trick' to let one daemon re-read its config doesn't mean that works for all of "Linux", which is my point; a user has to know the application he/she is using just a well as the OS that lies underneath. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 13 27N , 4 29 45E. SuSE 8.2 x86 Kernel k_Athlon 2.4.20-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.