Mad Penguin Launches Slackware Handbook Project 86
An anonymous reader writes "Mad Penguin's Adam Doxtater and Narayan Newton have launched a community-driven site dedicated to bringing the power and depth of the FreeBSD Handbook to Slackware Linux users. The site allows for the community to create and edit its own content. A simple voting system is in place to make sure the content that makes it into the handbook is of the highest quality. This is something that has been needed for some time and the idea of being able to edit our own material is really nice. A very unique project. Read the press release at LinuxPR.com."
Not true.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not true.. (Score:1, Troll)
Seriously.
OK, I will place my fot in my mouth.. (Score:5, Informative)
So much so that well... they said it best.
Unique in a sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mad penguin is almost certainly going to publish this as a book, and make sure things are organized. Looking at the main site (slackersbible.org) you can see they've already picked 4 catagories for articles.
This work will be unique by the organization of its community based content, even though moderation is done by a community. Think about everything2, the amount of useful content is enormus but you can't learn much because the organization is lacking.
Re:Unique in a sense. (Score:1)
Re:Unique in a sense. (Score:1)
That's far from unique - that's a direct consequence of the fact that they've started with the FreeBSD handbook, which had already done all of things.
Re:Not true.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not true.. (Score:2)
No, unique means there's only ONE. (Score:1)
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=unique
A simple voting system... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A simple voting system... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, oh! I know!
You're talking about the American political system, right?
Oh, wait. . .
Re:A simple voting system... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A simple voting system... (Score:1, Funny)
And then absolutely killed it.
link to the handbook (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.slackersbible.org/
btw. first post
Re:link to the handbook (Score:5, Informative)
Re:link to the handbook (Score:3, Funny)
And btw, the other two guys are also grateful.
Re:link to the handbook (Score:1)
Re:link to the handbook (Score:2)
why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they're not at conflict. At worst it's only healthy competition, like a sports game.
Personally I found it very difficult to get the community involved in documentation, and most of the "New Good Book" has been of my doing when my time is available.
And covers a lot more topics. My project is mainly designed to be a good introduction into Slackware Linux, teach people enough about the system to get it up, running, online, and understand the basics of linux in general and Slackware in particular. It isn't meant to be as indepth as what you're starting. Drop me a line sometime though, as I'd love to work together. Nothing like pooling resources to tackle big problems.
I wish I could do the same. I typically prefer the BSD license for most things. I spoke with Pat recently about possibly migrating the Slackware Linux Essentials book to the Apple Common Documentation License (which is basically the GPL only tailored for documentation), but as he explained it to me the copyright was never transfered to him, so ATM I'm stuck with the GPL, which is fine by me of course.
You gotta watch out for those when you're doing documentation! :^)
Re:why? (Score:2)
Re:why? (Score:2)
Short Answer
Ask a lawyer, I couldn't tell you.
Long Answer
IANAL, but it seems to me that as long as the portion in question contains no portions belonging to another author you may dual-license it all you please.
Re:why? (Score:2)
You gotta watch out for those when you're doing documentation!
That's why they are relying on the force of the wiki!!
Swee jebus, I hope not! (Score:2)
As a longtime slackware user, and someone who has dabbled with FreeBSD, I sure hope you're kidding about this.
The *LAST* thing we need is instructions like this:
"If you have versions 4.2 or less do X, if you have version >4.2 do Y, otherwise do Z"
Seriously, there were once instructions like this in the FreeBSD handbook (for building a kernel, as a matter of fact). It got fixed after I complained about it, but please, please, PLEASE have someone whose fir
Re:why? (Score:1)
Gentooism! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's an excellent way to document Linux instead of having to sift through a long README document or rtfm man pages.
Re:Gentooism! (Score:5, Funny)
Good Luck! (Score:5, Informative)
Let me be the first to wish them the best. I've been putting together a little "handbook" of my own (not nearly as ambitious as mimicking the excellent FreeBSD handbook, of which I own a hard copy incidently). Of course, anyone is free to contribute provided they license their writing under the GPL for inclusion. Basically it's a rewrite of the Slackware Linux Essentials book by Chris Lumens, Logan Johnson, and David Cantrell. You can find it here [lizella.net]. I call it "The Unofficial Revised Slackware Book Project". Stop by and take a look, I think you'll enjoy it.
Props to these guys and their project, and I'd like to point out to them that can use anything at the above site provided they do so under the GPL.
Re:Good Luck! (Score:2)
> I call it "The Unofficial Revised Slackware Book Project". Stop by and take a look, I think you'll enjoy it.
I'm sorry to break the bad news to you but your project has miserably failed the criteria of having an acceptable and pronounceable acronym.
Suggested improvement:
Free Administrators Guide to Slackware
Re:slashdotted (Score:2, Informative)
Good thing they have a voting system... (Score:5, Funny)
Too many connections
Line #31 certainly has to go.
Depth? (Score:4, Funny)
phew. for a moment there i thought they misspelled "death".
Jokes aside, what's so remarkable about documentation that everyone contributes that warrant s a news post? If I started a "all you need to know about open source" wiki and posted the link, would it be accepted? (if so, it's time to get some advertisers and start rehashing news)
Good for Slackware... (Score:5, Interesting)
But what of the 100+ other gnu/linux distributions out there? One of linux's greatest strengths (and weaknesses) is the insane number of distributions and the sometimes strikingly large differences between distros. This book will work for Slackware, and maybe help with a few of the slack-based distros... but probably won't be much help for fedora, gentoo, or the other distros.
But what do I know... I'm just a silly FreeBSD user, and this is only my two cents.
Best of luck w/ the slackware handbook!
Re:Good for Slackware... (Score:2)
So? Who cares?
Nobody's stopping anyone from making handbooks for those distributions.
Re:Good for Slackware... (Score:1)
For all intensive purposes a "distro" is just an installer & a package manager. Linux is linux. If you can run one well you
Re:Good for Slackware... (Score:2, Insightful)
What of them? Linux distros rise and sink over time, but Slackware has the distinction of being the first; and from where I'm sitting, I don't see any drop in its popularity.
We got a bit of a scare a few months ago when Pat got sick, and some might have got spooked into defecting to other distros, but many (most?) of us stayed put and don't regret doing so.
Re:Good for Slackware... (Score:1)
I was on the fence, tried a bunch of distros recently, and just can't find anything even close to Slackware. Gentoo's close, but too tedious for production use.
Long live Slackware!
And there's the FreeBSD wiki (Score:4, Informative)
Love the FreeBSD Handbook (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Love the FreeBSD Handbook (Score:1)
"Unique", not "Very Unique" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Unique", not "Very Unique" (Score:1)
That's very true!
Re:"Unique", not "Very Unique" (Score:2)
The one area where French words made almost no inroads, however, was in short, common words such as pronouns and articles and everyday verbs -- the backbones o
Re:"Unique", not "Very Unique" (Score:1)
CMS... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not unique.
The content mangement appears to be Drupal [drupal.org] with a modified Marvin 2k [drupal.org] theme.
Drupal has had these features forever.
Move along now.
RMS (Score:1)
Re:It's funny to see all you young linux-whippers (Score:2)
Yeah, it's not like BSD hasn't fragmented into separate distributions like (Net|Open|DragonFly)BSD.
The corporate overlords are just as welcome in the community as Joe Hacker. You cannot deny that hardware support added by RedHat/IBM/etc... does not benefit communities like Slackware and Debian, can you?
...you might want to feel what its like to have a seriously solid OS supporting your system.
The biggest difference between any UNIX
Even better? (Score:2)
Re:Even better? (Score:1)
FreeBSD Handbook in Plcuker format (Score:4, Interesting)
I do this for quite a few other pieces of work (the Gentoo handbook, PHP Documentation [plkr.org] (in 21 languages, it looks spectacular in color), the Creating XPCOM book [mozilla.org] is even available in Plucker format [plkr.org], as well as many others.
These are not straight conversions, they require actual human eyes to look over them, test them, add navigation and other elements. For example, look at the Plucker version of the 9/11 Report [plkr.org] that I did. I added a LOT of functionality that wasn't there in the original version. (I also put my pristine HTML source version online [gnu-designs.com] for anyone to read. You can see the additional features I've added in that copy).
I'll be making a lot more of my stealth works public soon.
When they're finished with the Slackware Handbook, I'd be more than happy to look it over, do the conversion, and provide it in a mobile format for our user community.
This is good news (Score:2)
Getting the priorities right. (Score:2)
Also, this seems to be in another one of those no-pictures documentation formats, like DocBook.
What's wrong with this picture? Go to the computer section of any bookstore and try to find a book that has no drawings or screenshots.
They need one more section, at least... (Score:2)