
FreeBSD Journal announced - drallison
http://www.freebsdnews.net/2013/11/26/freebsd-journal-announced/
======
spindritf
How is it that FreeBSD has such great documentation[1], now this while Linux
is stuck with random wikis and blogposts, usually out-of-date?

[1]
[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/)

~~~
dijit
Smaller community, more central management.

Linux is seen as a programming platform a lot more than freeBSD.

man pages work wonderfully though.

~~~
X-Istence
The man pages that come with FreeBSD are absolutely fantastic and top notch,
more so than most of the man pages I have found with Ubuntu for example.

I don't see how Linux being seen as a programming platform makes much if a
difference. FreeBSD has a pretty large community as well, but the core
community that puts together the OS seems to take much more pride in their
work and having it be fully documented than any other open source
organisation.

~~~
teddyh
The man pages of BSD are the official documentation. The man pages of, for
instance, GNU LibC are _not_ the official documentation. _This_ is:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/](https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/)

~~~
thirdsight
Which is the problem with Linux as a whole for me.

WiFi configuration is a particular problem where everything has awful
documentation so when you need to set up your WiFi without NetworkManager or
some other behemoth, much eye poking and googling on other devices is
required.

FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD: man ifconfig (and dmesg)

As a rule, and this happened to me more than once, you might need to configure
your network connection without the aid of Google and online documentation.
Either that or you're stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere with no WiFi
and no 3G and you want to read the docs.

~~~
teddyh
The official documentation is _available_ on the link I gave, but it should
also be available in the Info format on your local drive.

I find it much easier to search Info documents for something than grepping
compressed man pages.

~~~
thirdsight
Info is horrible. Case in point:

Awk manpage: [http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/man.cgi?query=awk](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=awk)

Gawk info (in html):
[http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html](http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html)

Both fully describe the capabilities of the software without resorting to
compressing it.

Elegance in simplicity.

~~~
teddyh
I disagree; In general, I prefer Info. I would explain why, but that would be
repeating myself; I instead refer to my previous post on this very topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6656656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6656656)

~~~
thirdsight
I think it's funny that someone else picked exactly the same example however I
respect your opinion on the subject.

------
01Michael10
The actual link for the future magazine's website (with the same info on
freebsdnews.net) -->
[http://www.freebsdjournal.com/](http://www.freebsdjournal.com/)

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RexRollman
"The Journal will be a bi-monthly publication and will be available on the web
or as an Android/iPhone/Kindle app."

Why make it an app? Making "app" magazines seems really dumb to me, when you
could simply make it available in an open format like PDF or ePub or text.

~~~
orik
I'm willing to bet it will be available in an open format "on the web".

The additional formats probably exist to serve a wider audience.

It would be nice if I could get it in TeX though.

~~~
RexRollman
I think you are the first person I have ever seen say that. If I may ask, what
benefits would having it TeX bring to you?

~~~
dded
Not speaking for the GP of course, but I often like to see the Latex source of
a well laid-out document. I learn from reading it as an example.

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unethical_ban
There's also BSD Now, which is pretty cool. More BSD coverage is always nice!

~~~
tachion
Also, there is BSD Magazine too: [http://bsdmag.org/](http://bsdmag.org/)

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UNIXgod
It's great to see many resources for keeping up with the unknown giant
nowdays!

