FreeBSD Handbook / Introduction

I tend to use w3m with the documentation or a reference manual on a tiling wm. so as long as it works on w3m. So I do hope manuals should work in that way.

Many years ago I helped translate some of the FreeBSD and Linux documentation.

Even then, the Handbook was a marvel compared to most of the cobbled together HOWTOs, I always felt it was a very underrated gem in the echosystem.

I'm undecided between Tiny Core Linux and NetBSD for an old Thinkpad T42, and I had similar emotions reading NetBSDs Guide a few days ago. Tiny Core is really great (I've been using it for 5-6 years) but:

- The T42 needs underclocking. Tiny Core solution: Google and find out that cpufrequtils helps (it did). How about NetBSD? First time reading of the manual, 5-10 minutes, and there it is, a built-in feature: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-power.html#chap-power-a...

- Similar thing with a non-standard keyboard layout: on Tiny Core, it had some symbols missing. To reconfigure the keymap on Tiny Core, I had to Google and find out about Linux's kbd project. Download kbd sources, compile it, read its (comprehensive, but really well written!) manual to get a hang of Linux's keyboard layout files (interesting stuff). Then modify the layout to my needs by trial and error, and then use two of kbd's tools + a minor hack to make it usable under Tiny Core.

On NetBSD: 5 minutes to read a few paragraphs in the Guide: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html#chap-cons-wsc.... Works.

What I particularly liked is that the same chapter of the NetBSD Guide also provides a brief and clear how-to for changing keyboard layout at the kernel level. In other words, everything relevant in one place, easy to find, really well structured and written. For a hobbyist like me, reading the Guide is a true learning experience as to how an operating system actually works.

Once again, I absolutely love Tiny Core Linux, its wiki, FAQ, forum, package manager and the provides.sh tool are really great. Excellent distro for less capable or ancient machines. But in terms of documentation, the BSD world does seem to be in a class of its own.

I suppose all three BSDs -- Net, Open and Free -- have more or less equally good documentation, no?

I remember growing up in grade school my friend's older brother was a very active contributer to FreeBSD. I remember being fascinated by the FreeBSD desktop they had running in the living room and this alternate universe of free software he was helping to create. I don't remember much other than his rants against windows (he thought it was terrible that people let their computers would do stuff like run CD-ROMs automatically on insert) and staring awestruck at some of his big-kid C/C++ files before me and and my friend went to tinker with our kiddie QBasic. But something about that ingrained in me a fascination with FreeBSD at an early age. I just thought it was so incredibly cool. It ran so lean and cleanly. It was made by passionate nerds like my friend's big brother, volunteers driven by a desire to do things correctly, clearly, and simply. Something about it just seemed so awesome and right. But I didn't have a computer of my own to run it on. Years later I went on to be a Linux user but have often wondered about diving into FreeBSD due to some strange form of nostalgia and sentimentalism.

That's not the same at all. This FreeBSD is a user's manual, Gentoo's is a developer's wiki. It doesn't tell me most of the things I need to know to do actual work.