Aaron Griffin wrote:
On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 03:33:49PM -0500, Dusty Phillips wrote:
2009/2/6 Aaron Griffin <[email protected]>:
Hey guys,
I wanted to make you aware of the following:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13140
The "Official Installation Guide" is severely outdated (the wiki page
still mentions "i686 optimized").
As one of the two people who was once on Arch's only attempt at an
official documentation team, and as one of several people who
contributed many of the first articles to the wiki, I have this to say
on the topic:
Drop the official install guide.
We know our wiki is well-maintained and well organized, and it seems
to do that by itself without much developer interference. Go wiki!
Originally, when we first set the wiki up Dennis, Judd, and I felt
that the official install guide should be more... well... official.
But its out of date, its always out of date, and there are wiki texts
that are not out of date. Now, seeing how our wiki experiment has
exceeded our hopes and expectations, I'd say that the install guide
(drop the 'official') should be community maintained as are all our
wiki pages. It will improve. When its time for a release, "somebody
official" should read through it, ensure its accurate, convert it to
plaintext and put it on the iso.
Dusty
I agree with the above for the most part. The only "problems" with the
Beginners Guide, which is the only up to date and worth of being
included anywhere guide is that its too "wikified". eg. references
"go here" with a link to another wiki page. It would definately take
less time to convert it into something less dependant on the wiki than
refactoring the official guide.
Also theres references to eg. like Loui said yaourt which should
probably go (?)
Also the official guide is linked from all over the place. archlinux.org
wiki.archlinux.org + its part of the iso. Should those change to link
the beginners guide? Should the Beginners Guide change its name to the
Arch Linux Handbook for example?
FTR I had always been in favour of maintaining 1 guide from the beginning.
I'm for changing the name to "Arch Linux Handbook" and maintaining one
guide. It seems simpler. But we should take care to include references
to unofficial tools and things somewhere else - i.e. the "install
yaourt" stuff
The name doesn't really matter. IMO anything we include on the official
ISO becomes official documentation by default. In that context, I
believe we should retain a simple how-to-install-Arch-core doc, with
clear direction for users regarding where to go next i.e. the wiki. In
other words, +1 for Xavier's suggestion in the bug report - a bare-bones
install guide consisting of revised sections 1-3 and a very brief Pacman
overview.
I have a problem with the Beginner's Guide as official documentation, as
I don't believe it gives an accurate first impression of Arch. It is not
compatible with Arch core principles, IMO, although I accept that it has
established itself as a useful community-provided resource. I have
already mentioned these reservations to Misfit, btw.
I'll have a look over dolby's latest revision, and if I have additional
suggestions, post them in the bug report.
T.
