home: https://starling.us
How-To’s for Non-Gurus
by Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
copyright 2007
At long last! Just announced is a NetBSD live CDROM aimed at the ordinary desktop user. I have not tried it yet, myself. But it looks to be just the thing for a rank newbie to NetBSD. And they allow me to gloat that my Perl script GUI tool to configure PPP is included with their distribution. So here is the link to their project. It appears very promising, but do let me know what you think of it, please. I am holding off from giving NeWBIE a go until I purchase that new laptop I’ve needed for a while. I will report on it in person after then.
Note that how to obtain the CDROM is not immediately apparent from their intro page. You will have to click on their download
tab at the top of that page then scroll down to the zipped ISO image for NeWBIE in order to download it.
I hope these may be of use to somebody somewhere. As a perpetual newbie to NetBSD (and Unix in general) myself, I am often dismayed by the utter guru-ish language in most Unix documentation. So sometimes, once I get something up and running, and if it was a bit confusing, before going on, I shall write it down in plain English (if indeed, there be such a thing) for the benefit of others.
And further, I will often go so far as to re-enact it all over again so that I may include a maximum of detail. This, as I have long since learnt in my own career, is the only trusted way to document fully and completely. To do any less is to risk a sin of omission and so waste another’s time. I hate it when some does that to me. So I shall avoid it in my own turn. Enough said.
Have you figured out in NetBSD something that at first seemed difficult or confusing? Earn good karma by doing someone else a favor! Document it thoroughly. Preferably, start a log before you begin. Keep track of all your steps (in the first person, present tense) just as you do them.
Ex-post-facto, edit out only such wrong turns or dead ends as will not serve to enlighten. Write in plain English. Hold to a reasonably linear narrative without tangental observations. Just tell how to get the thing working, cookbook fashion. Expect that readers will study the concept only after first obtaining a working example. This, at least, is what I have striven here to do. I will gladly host your how-to here, with full credit to you, of course.
Then again, you might prefer a markedly different writing style, or to write about a different BSD. These too are equally welcome. I will be equally pleased to host them, or link to them elsewhere, but glathered under a separate grouping so as to maintain the distinction.
May these few contributions here be of use to someone somewhere. Please consider contributing to them. With ever more, easier-to-follow documentation written specifically for newbies, BSD (and especially NetBSD) may flourish and prosper all the more.
Respectfully,
Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
Kalamazoo, MI, USA