Another night in
Last night, my GF tried to get FreeBSD set up to her satisfaction, while I edited my .Xdefaults file to make Xterms use an anti-aliased font. Not sure if I'll keep it - some of the characters are a little unclear at my usual Xterm size - but I'll give it a go. I considered changing the console font as well, but on closer inspection, I actually quite like it already.
FreeBSD, on the other hand. . .
The documentation for my distro, Gentoo, is superb. Just about any question I've ever had, I've been able to get answered quickly and easily, from a well-written and concise article.
Trying to find out a few things about FreeBSD, however. . . hundreds of overly-technical pages that assume you already know 9/10s of the subject, poorly structured. . . It's a mess. Sorry, FreeBSD fans, but it is. There are times when you just want to know "How do I do this one thing?" and you don't want to be given the answer "Read this handbook that tells you five hundred other things and you'll find how to do that one thing scattered through the guide."
If I were the one installing FreeBSD, my new goal in life would be to write some halfway decent guides myself. But I'm not, so I've just handed my gf a link to an O'Reilly page of links that are aimed at beginners, and hopefully she'll find what she needs from that. If not, she'll probably go back to Ubuntu, the new install CD of which I'm downloading at the moment. Or maybe I'll look into Suse or Mandriva and see what their upgrade path is like. . . If it's better than Ubuntu's, I may suggest she trial them, even tho I have a deep dislike of RPMs
Pity, really. Up until the upgrade, we were both impressed by Ubuntu. . .
FreeBSD, on the other hand. . .
The documentation for my distro, Gentoo, is superb. Just about any question I've ever had, I've been able to get answered quickly and easily, from a well-written and concise article.
Trying to find out a few things about FreeBSD, however. . . hundreds of overly-technical pages that assume you already know 9/10s of the subject, poorly structured. . . It's a mess. Sorry, FreeBSD fans, but it is. There are times when you just want to know "How do I do this one thing?" and you don't want to be given the answer "Read this handbook that tells you five hundred other things and you'll find how to do that one thing scattered through the guide."
If I were the one installing FreeBSD, my new goal in life would be to write some halfway decent guides myself. But I'm not, so I've just handed my gf a link to an O'Reilly page of links that are aimed at beginners, and hopefully she'll find what she needs from that. If not, she'll probably go back to Ubuntu, the new install CD of which I'm downloading at the moment. Or maybe I'll look into Suse or Mandriva and see what their upgrade path is like. . . If it's better than Ubuntu's, I may suggest she trial them, even tho I have a deep dislike of RPMs
Pity, really. Up until the upgrade, we were both impressed by Ubuntu. . .
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