New free Knoppix book for beginners
I have written a free book about Knoppix for beginners. It is called "Knowing Knoppix". It is in PDF format, and the original OpenOffice.org (sxw) source documents are also available. The book addresses Knoppix version 3.3. I realise 3.3 is a bit dated now but that is the version that was available when I started writing the book! It is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. Download from my page:
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New link
I would like feedback to help improve the guide. A printed version with a corresponding Knoppix bootable CD and boot floppy disk is also available by mail order for a small charge. It would be really nice if my effort could be mentioned on this site. Please note that the book is not for "dummies". Instead, it is for smart people who want - or need - to use Knoppix for the first time, without prior experience of Linux.
Phil
Here I am, having survived a Slashdotting
Wow, I always wanted to submit a story to Slashdot. Now, here I am *in* a Slashdot story. More than I ever wanted! It certainly had an amazing effect. In two days, an extraordinary 25,327 visitors downloaded, or attempted to download, the PDF. Perhaps this would be a good place for me to respond to some of the Slashdot comments, since that discussion is now closed and I missed it. From the article:
> "The only people plugging in a knoppix cd are nerds who #1: already have a considerable working
> knowledge of linux & 2: don't read...this."
Yes, I know, that's pretty true. But everyone has to start somewhere. I hope at least some people might find it useful.
> "[if it doesn't work]... you've lied to them saying it was plain and simple... he never says anything
> like "and if THIS doesn't happen, THEN do.."
Guilty! I have changed certain sections about reading the hard disk accordingly. I have already made some attempts in the "Quick help" sections to address some of the errors I have encountered and mistakes I have made while using Knoppix myself.
"Kind of amusing that open source documentation should be released in a proprietary format."
Yes. I plead guilty again. But it is at least an open source format that is built into OpenOffice.org, and GNU Ghostscript, both of which are GPL.
>"Using OpenOffice... for a 134 page document? I stay away from office suites for documents
> longer than a handful of pages... They never heard of LaTeX [latex-project.org]?"
Indeed. Using OpenOffice.org for a 100+ page document is getting kinda horrible... I tried LaTeX but I never figured out how to get the kind of presentation control that I wanted. :-(
> "I think the book bounces back and forth between good "So You Want To Be A Linux
> Consultant" material, like the stuff about hda, fd0, boot process, init, and so on, and
> good "Grandpa Computer User" material, like the stuff about KDE ("click on things
> to start them", "you can lasso many things at once"). This makes it difficult for either
> group to use."
That is an excellent comment. See here the power of peer review. I could never have thought of that myself, yet it seems so obvious now it's been pointed out to me. I have moved the material about "device names" and "user accounts" almost to the back of the book.
> "wasn't necessary to go into detail about the bootup process... as soon as people see "SCSI" or
> IDE" or "PCMCIA" they'll go into idiot mode and fail to grok the rest of the paper, and
> resort to throwing feces at the monitor"
Good point. I have taken out the detailed description of the startup process. I have replaced it with an one-line explanation and a few examples of how long the auto-detection process takes (between 40 seconds and 2 minutes depending on the speed of the machine).
there's a new version of Knowing Knoppix out.
Changes:
"...certain inaccuracies have been corrected; some of the more advanced material has been moved towards the back of the book; and a few non-essential details have been deleted."
Go download it:
http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder....pix/index.html
*spanish version in the works
