On Sat, 9 Jan 1999, Leon McClatchey wrote:
> hi:-0
> Michael Johnson wrote:
> Actually, "RTFM" is an old habit that is deeply rooted in Microsoft and related
> fields, because as far as Linux is concerned, sometimes "TFM" isn't quite as
> obvious. and so you have to go to other sources for the information. I'm
> fairly new to Linux (only been actively playing with it now for perhaps 6
> months or so, (or however long that Suse 5.1 has been available). And there are
> some questions that are just not available via man -k ?. I've got about 3
> Linux/Unix books floating around here and even with that information at hand,
> for some of the questions that I have come across, I've had to get the answer
> from the good folks on this list and other places on the internet. So perhaps
> in Linux, "RTFM" is not really applicable?
RTFM is not a Linux-ism, but a Unix-ism, and that precedes the Micro$oft
power monopolies. I think there is an old
thing in Unix culture that delights in being 'smarter than the other guy'
and there can be a dangerous pride in obscurity, which I think may be
where RTFM originated--in a certain intellectual arrogance that you find
in technical gifted people. Microsoft, is a different culture with
different originating soil. Unix was meant to
be good. Microsoft was simply meant to be commercially successful. The
shift is not so much one of content but of priority. I honestly don't
believe M$ really cares that their products suck. They just want to get as
much money as possible. They know dos shell was just a whore that was a
unix shell rip off and a badly done one at that. But unix people want it
to be done RIGHT FIRST. M$ people just want to get it done _enough_ to get
some money, and figure when people complain they can get more money but
just releasing 'improvements' for what they screwed up out of
shiftlessness in the first place, so with M$ you always wind up with a
half-cooked steak they call an 'operating system' where nothing works as
it's supposed to. This pride in The Right Thing and technical soundness is
what makes Unix kewl, and what makes Linux Kewl.This pride in the technical
nature of Unix and it's spin offs is probably where the arrogance comes
from: knowing you've got your shit together and that the system truly
rocks and does it's frigging job. This different mentality
is at the heart of software culture, I think, and it shows in the products
and abilities latent to both oses. I think a good example of this history
is analogous to a joke I once read in a book on NeXT, where one of the
programmers says something about not wanting to deal with the 'common man'
and that it was different from dealing with other hackers:
in a normal society at a common function someone tells a joke and people
laugh...
among hackers, one simply tells the joke _number_ and everyone laughs
without the joke even being told-- cause they automatically know what you
mean. :-)
-M
-
To get out of this list, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e
Check out the SuSE-FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/ and the
archiv at http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html
