Re: tlug: RTFM and advice

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Darren" == Darren Cook <darren@example.com> writes:

    >>> My point is that even well-documented software can confuse
    >>> users with simple oversights like this.
    >> simple oversights on the part of the user, yes.  Anyone stupid
    >> enough to not figure this one out on their own really shouldn't
    >> be adminning a web

    Darren> They seemed intelligent enough to me. When people download
    Darren> NT software they don't expect the readme and install files

This is true.  They don't have to deal with the proliferation of
systems that Unix people do.  Ah, the benefits of dealing with a
monopoly.

    Darren> to be talking about unix. The "simple oversight" was
    Darren> including irrelevent documentation (or at least not
    Darren> renaming them to *.unix).

My experience is that none of the documentation is "irrelevant."
Typically the author(s) write the docs for the first system, these get 
expanded over time, footnotes get added for the ports, and when the
footnotes get big enough, they get moved to a file README.system,
which is explicitly an appendix.  Unfortunately, not always labeled
that way.  But this is not a problem for anybody who's used Linux for
very long.

The problem IMHO is that (a) the users are busy (oh, God, I don't have
time to read 5 20kB files), (b) lazy (by your logic: they're reading a
file that doesn't help and is full of strange commands like `ls' and
`kill -HUP' and doesn't mention clicking in a dialog box, and they go
ahead and assume that the only thing that looks like it might have
something to do with Windows can be dispensed with because it says
"NT" and they have "95"?  C'mon), but most important (c) encouraged by
their experience with Microsoft products to expect that (i) the
READMEs don't contain much interesting information and (ii) it doesn't 
do much good to know it anyway, because they already know how to
navigate Windows dialogs and the stuff in the READMEs can't be fixed
that way.

This is a culture clash, and I hope the Apache people and anybody else
who's going to port _to_ NT learn to get it right.  But Linux users,
for good or bad, are going to have to read all the READMEs, at least
until they find instructions leading to a successful install :-), for
the forseeable future.

And they'll become sys admins that way.  Here in Japan, there's a
crying need for that.

    >> site in the first place, IMHO.  God help them when they try to
    >> add a virtual host or a password-protected directory, if they

Adding virtual hosts or passwords is a bad example, as Darren points
out:

    Darren> You should try it in the commercial NT web servers. Find
    Darren> the right tab in the dialog box and fill in the blanks.
    Darren> Then click OK (don't even have to find the PID and kill
    Darren> -HUP it ;-). This is what the users trying out Apache are
    Darren> used to. They are technical enough to understand how
    Darren> virtual hosts and password protection works. They coming

I doubt that; they are technical enough to fill in the blanks in a
config file as opposed to a dialog box, but most can't possibly know
_how_ they work because they don't read code.  (I think that's a
pretty safe assumption for 95/98 users.)  They don't know just how
vulnerable that password protection is (does NT at least come with an
equivalent to cracklib to automatically beat on the password file for
weaknesses?)  They'd eat a CERT advisory and then complain because
their bad breath doesn't go away.

Let's hope they don't need to deal with any CERT advisories.  CERT
advisories don't come with dialog boxes that come with tabs and
blanks.

And if they care enough to be using passwords, that matters.

    Darren> to Apache either because it's free or because they want
    Darren> the added flexibility it offers. They just need help
    Darren> translating their internal concepts into the correct
    Darren> directive or command line.

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