[colug-432] The Group

[Chris Clonch]

On Friday 18 December 2009 08:53:42 pm Steve VanSlyck wrote:

> If I did have anything to suggest for the group, all I can say is that
> personally I would greatly value some of the very basic nuts-and-bolts
> education about linux and how to "make it go."

I found Gentoo to be very helpful in understanding how GNU/Linux works and how 
to make it go.  "Some assembly required" really helps to unveil what component 
does what, and in turn helped me to understand how other distributions worked.  
I would imagine Slackware, or other source-based distributions, would have the 
same effect.

Between Gentoo's installation handbooks and the remnants of the old wiki, 
their documentation is/was hands down the best around as it took the time to 
explain basic system software options.

> As a one-time pretty good DOS and *.bat user (and my 15-year old DOS 5.1
> disks still install just fine thank you), I was one of those who liked to
> tinker around making sure there were no unnecssary files in my OS and so
> on. With linux, one of the big secrets (to me) is how to revert back from
> a program install. So much confusing stuff happens when a program is
> compiled and installed. I'd like to suggest that as a topic for a meeting.

I was very much the same way, although nowadays time is precious so I've 
allowed some bloat into my system.

-Chris