Todd Cary <todd at aristesoftware.com> wrote: > Agreed! For me there is a distinction between > "understanding" and "knowing". My 30 years experience > has been in the Windows environment I think the first instance of MS Basic was the Altair of 1976. I assume you mean your experience has been on the single-user environments of the 8080 on-ward, yes? ;-> > and in comparison, Linux is much easier to understand. Once you learn UNIX terminology, it's good 4ever! With Windows terminology, you retrain every 5+ years. > The challenge is knowing where to look or knowing which > function and switch to use. If Roblimo's new book is any indication, users want a book that is ~300 pages and teaches them how to _use_ Linux -- especially with the mass corporate adoption taking place. > I often use the term "spiral learning"; that is one starts > with a task to do. Rather than having to commit reems of > information to memory to achieve a simple task, it is > easier to accomplish the task by looking up what is > wanted. Then one can expand (spiral outward) his > knowledge. Most people are like this, task-oriented. The "Samba 3 by Example" book has been outstanding in this regard. But there is still the "Samba 3 HOWTO Collection" for those that want more of a "manual." > Now I have many friends who prefer to read manuals from > cover to cover (and they remember most of it). Of course, > my dyslexia creates it's own hurdle and bias. I want to write 2 immediately: - Linux for Users - Linux Configuration Management The first would be a 300 page book on just using Linux. From the CLI basics (but modernized for Linux) to GNOME and KDE (possibly an appendix on XFCE). Designed for Fedora Core and RHEL (including CentOS). I believe this is sorely needed for corporate users, even more so than end-users. The second would be a 500 page book on handling the roll-out and maintanence of a Linux network. Once again, it would be for Fedora Core and RHEL (including CentOS). I believe this is also sorely needed for corporate system and network administrators. There are countless books on Linux that are too UNIX-like in viewpoint, thinking that the user is also a sysadmin because, let's face it, that's largely who has used UNIX for so long. With Linux, there are more user aspects -- from office suites to removable devices (CD/DVDs, dongles, etc...) that are commonly used. More on the other flip, I've come in after many open source projects have failed or are in the middle of failure because of lack of configuration management. It's just like the same problem NASA had -- just because you use COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) components that save you 90% doesn't mean you can cut QA (quality assurance) as well. Same deal with Linux, you can save 90% of system costs, but you aren't going to save 90% on configuration management -- especially when there are a *DARTH* of books that cover it for Linux. -- Bryan J. Smith | Sent from Yahoo Mail mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org | (please excuse any http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ | missing headers)