What would ESR think of Gentoo?

[wilburpan]

Ack. I knew as soon as I went to sleep last night that I should have given this thread a different title. However, it was reading ESR's article, thinking back to my experience getting started with Gentoo just over a year ago, and the many posts I've read in these forums on how well documented Gentoo is that first made me think about what ESR's opinion might be.

My old beef with the Gentoo documentation was with USE flags. As much as I read opinions on the excellence of the USE flag documentation I could not for the life of me figure them out with the documentation at the time. For me, the issue was not what they did but the reasons why USE flags would be a good thing, and I don't think I'm that dumb (although my wife would probably disagree on occasion). The present form of the documentation is better, but given that the frequency of USE flag questions has not changed over the past year, I would guess that there are still issues with the documentation.

The take home message, I think, is to never assume that just because a program or documentation is understandable to you, then it is understandable to everyone.

Put it this way: if the documentation is so good, why are there so many HOWTOs?

Oh, and providing examples in the documentation would help a lot.
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I'm only hanging out in OTW until I get rid of this stupid l33t ranking.....Crap. That didn't work.

[ozbird]