On Sun, Nov 06, 2005 at 12:13:36AM +0100, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> The Gentoo Release Engineering team is pushing us to remove stage1 and
> stage2 references from the Gentoo Handbook. They are getting too many errors
> because the user is not able to fully comprehend the implications of a
> stage1 or stage2 installation.

I don't mind the stage 1/2 stuff being removed from the main handbook,
as I can see how those instructions could easily confuse new people.
However, I'd be pretty annoyed to say the least if that documentation
wasn't at least reproduced elsewhere, because how else are people
supposed to be able to do a stage 1/2 install? If a lack of maintainers
is the problem, I'm happy to help out with that area of the
documentation and keep it up to date based on user comments.

As for newbies not wanting to know this sort of stuff - the first time I
used Gentoo (admittedly it wasn't my first experience with Linux by a
long shot though) I did a stage 1 install following the instructions
from the handbook and I found the process to be a good learning
experience. Yes, people will run into problems if they do a stage 1
install (I know I have on several occasions), but we learn a lot more
from our mistakes than we do from something that just works first time.

When one of the key complaints about Linux is that the documentation is
often lacking, I'm surprised to see a distro with some of the best
manuals considering doing away (or at least hiding somewhere else) with
parts of it.

Paul

-- 
Rogue Tory
http://www.roguetory.org.uk
-- 
gentoo-doc@g.o mailing list