Even rabid Linux advocates won’t claim that it’s an easy operating system to install — or use –unless you’re already a Unix expert. Even though it’s available for free off the Web, beginning programmers are willing to pay for shrink-wrapped solutions from companies like Red Hat or Caldera because they include how-to installation programs.
Linux is a massive system. It has a working version of Unix that employs not only the core developed by Linus Torvalds and his cohorts, but also versions of standard GNU and Unix packages, from emacs to XWindows. How will anyone but the experts figure out how the system works?
Enter the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) (sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/), a decentralized organization dedicated (sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/LDP-Manifesto.html) to collecting information on Linux and making it available for free.
The LDP encourages for-profit publishers to take the organization’s ongoing documentation and sell it. The reproduced material, however, will not be made exclusive to any one publisher and the individual authors will retain the rights to their contributions. As a result of these restrictions, few publishers have taken the plunge.
An example of what has been published is “The Linux Encyclopedia” (now in its sixth edition), which includes everything currently in print on the operating system. It’s published by WorkGroup Solutions (www.wgs.com), a software maker, not a traditional publisher. The book has 1600 pages with each of its 51 sections written by a different author(s), all of whom are accessible by e-mail. This way, if the essay didn’t clarify an issue enough, you can e-mail the author for more information. Don’t expect that from all commercial software publishers, though.
Everything in the “Encyclopedia” is also available for free online. Reading through the different sections shows you both how arcane (learn how to install Hebrew fonts into XWindows on page 965) and fun Linux is to the people constructing it.
The active mailing list for the LDP suggests that hundreds of people are documenting unexpected nooks and crannies of the operating system. And much effort is expended on making sure all the documentation is peer-reviewed and then published in the same manner.
Hundreds of people working together and alone, and for free. Documenting Linux is moving forward much the same way as the operating system itself.
