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FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

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Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#3

Post by vipermoney »

johnklos wrote: post #2

Isn't it nice when good documentation is treated as more than an afterthought? This is good to see :)

Judging by the massive amount of unfixed bug reports linked in this email, doesn't it seem like documentation has been an afterthought for them for a long time?

Does anyone have a comparison for OpenBSD or NetBSD's documentation having outdated or incorrect info?

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#4

Post by fegu »

I have a FreeBSD certification gained from an exam at EuroBSDCon some years (many years actually) ago. FreeBSD is great, and we still run it at work. Great docs is part of the reason we like it.

(Btw this page is extremely annoying to read on mobile. I get that we like the no frills console 1337 vibes, but usability is perhaps even higher?)

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#5

Post by erk__ »

fegu wrote: post #4

I have a FreeBSD certification gained from an exam at EuroBSDCon some years (many years actually) ago. FreeBSD is great, and we still run it at work. Great docs is part of the reason we like it. (Btw this page is extremely annoying to read on mobile. I get that we like the no frills console 1337 vibes, but usability is perhaps even higher?)

The official archive seems to be a bit better https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-announce/2022-Apr...

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#6

Post by the_only_law »

vipermoney wrote: post #3
johnklos wrote: post #2

Isn't it nice when good documentation is treated as more than an afterthought? This is good to see :)

Judging by the massive amount of unfixed bug reports linked in this email, doesn't it seem like documentation has been an afterthought for them for a long time? Does anyone have a comparison for OpenBSD or NetBSD's documentation having outdated or incorrect info?

NetBSD documentation is just straight up missing sometimes. iirc a lot of kernel interfaces are both missing documentation and are different than other BSDs. You either need dig through the source or ask for help.

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#7

Post by srl »

I'm baffled. Is there some broader context that makes this make sense? From what I can tell, this fellow (the one sending the email) is being paid money to develop priorities for updating the FreeBSD handbook. His response is to send an email to the /announcement/ mailing list, with a list of all the relevant bug reports he could find, asking others to do his job for him?

A reasonable survey to send around might be "how often do you use the FreeBSD docs?" "How often do you notice errors in section 1? Section 2? Section 3?" That's not what this is. It's "here's a specific error, and I'm gonna run a /poll/ to figure out what the priority on fixing it is".

Even ignoring the "that's why we hired /you/" component---this must be a singularly ineffective way to gain reliable information. Very few people are going to reply (because each of the ~100 questions is rather technical!). The responses are therefore going to be self-selected to... I don't know, whoever has the time and will to waste on this.

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#9

Post by protomyth »

Decabytes wrote: post #8

How much overlap is there between OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD? Like can I use the FreeBSD one to learn how to use the other BSDs?

In a general sense, and a lot of commands are the same, but they are very different for a lot of stuff.

Compare https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/ to https://www.openbsd.org/faq/index.html and you can see the large differences.

Re: FreeBSD Handbook Improvement Survey

#10

Post by hereforphone »

srl wrote: post #7

I'm baffled. Is there some broader context that makes this make sense? From what I can tell, this fellow (the one sending the email) is being paid money to develop priorities for updating the FreeBSD handbook. His response is to send an email to the /announcement/ mailing list, with a list of all the relevant bug reports he could find, asking others to do his job for him? A reasonable survey to send around might be "…

Interesting use of slashes
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