Don Gould wrote: > The keyword was 'concept'. I have reviewed the man file (as I write
this email) and found there is a total of half a paragaph on the subject
(less text that Jim has written in his response).
Unix documentation in general is very terse. In the first paragraph of the mount(8) man page is the (accurate) description :-
> The mount command serves to attach the file system found on some
> device to the big file tree.
Unfortunately for people skimming the documents, "some device" doesn't mean "a piece of hardware attached to the computer" but actually means "an interface to a device driver available from the kernel". There is absolutely no requirement that "a device" represents hardware in any shape or form - indeed some of the more interesting devices are not!
However, the term "some device" as used in this man page is completely internally consistent with other unix documentation. The jargon (the technical volcabulary, if you prefer) of unix is precise, and often at odds with other OS jargons. You have to tread carefully when making assumptions.
This does not make the learning path easy, but unix is not easy. Making it easy is something that Apple have had a go at with OS X. Even then they fail occasionally ... hence the lamentation in http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/536.html
bb. Books. Very few give consideration to the fact that while Linux is used by less than 5% of the population there is still a 95% population that use computers who really are trying to learn 'a different way of doing something' and not 'how to do something'.
I could rant all day on this subject.
Go for it ... however, I'm not quite sure that this forum is the right place to do it. Every "community" has some sort of selection criteria, and the one here seems to be common with many technical forums on the Internet, which is "assistance for those who wish to help themselves". Perhaps some of your thoughts would be more appropriate for an "OS advocacy" community? These are the people that want to make Linux easy :-) I just want to understand all the non-easy bits ...
-jim
