Kevin Donnelly [mailto:kevin@dotmon.com] replied to Carl: [snippety-doo-dah]

Paradoxically, I am not convinced that the Admin/User guides were really adding much value, so the starter book is probably the best way to go. 5 years ago, they were a very attractive addition, mainly because there was very little end-user info about Linux out there, unless you were prepared to go hunting through various websites. But look at things now - in the UK there are 3 Linux mags, my local bookshop will have at least 4 or 5 books on Linux, a bigger bookshop will have about a third as much as is devoted to Microsoft Windows, and there are piles of SUSE boxes in the local PCWorld. There's plenty of info now, and the systems themselves have improved so much that they're a lot easier to get to grips with. Comparing the guides over several releases, as I did, was also instructive - I got the impression that not all the new things in every release got inserted, and some things that were no longer relevant were kept. And of course it was impossible to deal with everything in the detail you really need if you are a beginner anyway. The high point of the books was around 7.1/7.2 (when there was also a separate QuickStart guide), and I think that since then it has just become too difficult to keep up. I personally would far rather Novell puts the effort into a good wiki at openSUSE, and good tips pages at SUSE - I think the feedback on the openSUSE list from SUSE employees is a very impressive new development, and I hope that continues.

This mirrors my experience. I liked the Admin book (I've been purchasing since 5.1 or 5.2, so I got 'em all) as a kind of intro to Linux, and it often had some good stuff in it, that caused me to learn things... However... Despite the endless problems that I had with Linux (it just happened to be SuSE, no fault to them, I'm just the kind of guy who automatically finds the wrong way to do something, reads the wrong assumptions into any statement, etc.) I don't believe that there was _ever_, not even once since 1997, that I actually found the solution to a problem in that book. As I said, I learned a lot of good general stuff from paging through those chapters. But almost invariably, when I needed to look up something, it would not be there, or it would be treated in cursory fashion. At least, the Admin book sometimes gave me the correct terminology to look up elsewhere. But even that was not often the case because (see previous paragraph) I was usually looking for the wrong words in the index. I think you are right that 7.x was the high point for that document :-) Later versions talked about approaches to common activities that had been superseded by newer apps, incorporated into the kernel, or otherwise made different or redundant. Over the years, this list has been where I learned about Linux. And Togan Muftuoglu's [sp?] FAQ for several years. If I'd been a real hobbyist, I'm sure I would have learned a lot by now. As it is, I'm one of those people who has generic uses for a computer, and could have done what I wanted at least as well with Windoze or Mac -- it has just been my stubborn streak that keeps me with Linux. All that said, when I want to curl up with a book to read, it's made of paper, not video pixels. Cheers, Kevin (er... other Kevin... I probably had the name first...) The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it.