On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 08:19:32PM -0400, Serguei Mokhov wrote: > > Having taught Linux/Unix programming and including bits of > administration for awhile on one side and lots of publication > writing on the other, I can contribute. > > Not sure what Keith's plans are, I'd suggest writing this > guide on Github using LaTeX.
Interesting ideas. Most of the feedback I've gotten on this and other lists prefer "Widow(er)s" to "Widows" - I await feedback from a feminist librarian friend about the indexing of parentheses. I don't like "Linux Survivor" and variants, as those imply Linux must be survived. Nor long titles. Subtitles are good enough for details, but a title should be short and catchy so book buyers can remember it and find the book. I expect there will also be a workbook, and a community website with questions and answers. The workbook will be a "pencil in essential configuration information here" document, useful stuff like where the files with idiosyncratic and personalization information can be found on a particular set of systems, what the local network looks like, who the network provider is, what the IP address was the last time we looked, what accounts (like rimuhosting or dyn) need to be paid and who the helpful people are there. I like the idea of LaTeX, though my wife insists on writing everything with LibreOffice Writer, including docs that really ought to be written with vim. She's approaching 70, and new tricks are hard to encourage. "Learning LaTeX" by Griffiths and Higham is an easy read, but she doesn't need to know about math markup, so I hope to find a more basic book with suggestions about finding usable online documents and help websites about LaTeX. The purpose is not to convert a surviving spouse into a Linux adept, but to help them survive as simply as possible with what's there, and to encourage a premortem sysadmin to understand the postmortem implications of system design. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
