I couldn't find the new users section on the forums?
On the main page of [openSUSE.org](http://www.opensuse.org) I clicked on discover it. They promised tutorials and documentation, and then the page it brings me to says project, distribution and wiki. Then, I clicked on wiki, and there is an introduction to the instruction manual. To me, tutorials might mean videos. Maybe, I misunderstood the word "documentation." When I think of the word "documentation", I think of an instruction manual. It is almost like the opensuse developers want to scare away new users. Thanks for helping me understand this.
You don’t mean bait and switch, do you? I thought they promise that it is free, now you are saying something about paying money for a boxed set? I clicked on the link you sent me, and it looks good for documentation for the last release, but I looked for how you got to that page, and couldn’t find a way to it.
Do you mean that they are a corporation that wants to make money off the users, so keeping the instruction manual either very hard to find or difficult-to-read is their way of manipulating opensuse users? I see for German customers, they can buy the boxed set for 40euros or 60euros, before shipping and handling. I think 40euros is $60.
Okay, who can translate the word “tutorial” for me?
Give it a few days to get up to speed the version has just released. If you are disparate look at the 11.4 tutorial most thing will be about the same the new docs will come eventually. You do know it costs money to make a destro also to produce it on media and box it up. There is no need to buy the box set but if you want some hand holding it comes with like 30-60 days professional install support. So If you want or need the hand holding you gotta pay for it. Of course you can get support here but we are all volunteers.
Actually the small operation who distribute the box sets are separate from Attachmate; they took over that aspect a while back. So there’s no “big corporation” out to milk you. I reckon the charge is reasonable for people who find it hard to download and want a dead-tree manual and some support. Nobody is obliged to buy from them. Mind you some people do pay for paper books and e-books on all aspects of Linux so some people reckon that it’s worth their while supplementing their free software with paid-for writing.
There is startup manual in PDF format on the DVD that you can peruse or even print. I can’t comment on the availability or ease of finding links online.
Just to clarify, the boxed version is from open-slx not from the
openSUSE project which is a community project and everything is free (as
free speech) and also free as free beer.
open-slx adds phone support for installation and printed docs to it for
which you pay if you want to have it, nothing wrong with that but I do
not use it. It is a separate company not the openSUSE community.
It seems just that the openSUSE people could not fully finish all
documentation for 12.1 completely.
It is not clear to me either to which tutorials the link you gave refers
but I disagree a bit that one can assume that a tutorial is a video. Why
should it? A tutorial is usually a written introduction.
It is safe to use the reference and startup guide from 11.4 with 12.1,
but this are not tutorials.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
I guess I thought of each Linux project as having a character behind it. Some people would trust Ubuntu and Canonical to be interested in their needs. Just like some people trust Microsoft and Apple Corporations. I asked if we could trust opensuse, and nobody who responded understood the question. If it is such a big project that no one is taking responsibility for it, then that may not be a good thing.
You all thought I was asking for help. I was asking why I should even need help in the first place. If you go to openSUSE.org, there are three large bars, one green, one grey and one orange. Inside the green one is written, “learn more about opensuse with tutorials, documentation and more!” It sounds like they are trying to make it easy for beginners.
If they were trying to tell the truth, would they write, “for advanced users only” or “if you are new to Linux, try another distro”, or “we are still drafting the instruction manual.” But, where on the page when you click through is the link to the instruction manual for 11.4?
With my limited intellect, I was able to find the instruction manual for Ubuntu and for PC-BSD. I just tried to find the manual for Fedora. I couldn’t find it. But, I couldn’t find any big promises, either.
So you ask at the wrong place. You ask for the responsible persons
behind openSUSE, you will not find them on the forums which as a users
help users thing.
This is then where you can meet the developers, packagers and the makers
of the distribution.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
Am 21.11.2011 02:16, schrieb veganguy:
>
> Martin,
>
> I give you permission to give me your opinion, even if you are
> wrong.
>
To what do you refer, that there are no developers here and that you
have to go to the mailing lists to meet the responsible persons?
Do you think that is wrong?
And sorry, but where did I write an opinion, I cannot find it.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
On 2011-11-21 01:56, veganguy wrote:
>
> I guess I thought of each Linux project as having a character behind it.
> Some people would trust Ubuntu and Canonical to be interested in their
> needs. Just like some people trust Microsoft and Apple Corporations. I
> asked if we could trust opensuse, and nobody who responded understood
> the question. If it is such a big project that no one is taking
> responsibility for it, then that may not be a good thing.
openSUSE is a community. There are things that are done by SUSE employees,
and things that are done by people like you volunteering their time. If you
don’t like what the web page says, you are welcome to donate your time and
help improving it.
Like the forum. We here are just users helping other users - not the people
“responsible” for the distribution.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Do you really need explicit instructions on how to find the documentation I linked to? Your time would be better spent looking around openSUSE’s web site and asking questions about what you want to know than accusing Novell of lying.
There’s an installation guide for 11.4 here. If you want to see a video of an installation walk-through, there’s one here.
The whole openSUSE wiki is, in essence, a tutorial.
If you feel cheated somehow, you are welcome to return the product; all of the $0 you paid for it will be refunded.
If you’re talking corporations there’s no better example of a corporation providing operating systems than microsoft, and the help they provide for the average user isn’t really all that great, not all that accessible either to the average joe, google is often a better resource than microsoft’s site
Generally speaking the online opensuse documentation really is great, there isn’t much that’s not covered by it, but it isn’t often complete as soon as the latest version is released which is something that’s true for pretty much all OS’s I thought, the amount of time and work involved aside, seems to me documentation can’t really be complete for any software until it’s reasonably mature, tried & tested
Case of unrealistic expectations imo or possibly even a spot of trolling if his comment to martin on giving him permission to give his opinion is anything to go by, martin gives up a fair amount of time to help people for little or no reward and didn’t deserve that sort of rudeness in return for trying to help the OP
Reference the new users section, you could start by reading our READ-ONLY New User How To/FAQ (read only) section, and then post in our general forum(s) area as appropriate for your subject matter.
My view on this is openSUSE, while produced by SuSE-GmbH still is very much a free and open distribution, which means much of the effort to produce it comes from the community. So you are welcome and encouraged to contribute to this documentation project and help in the documentation production. openSUSE can use users who contribute (since most users pay nothing for their use of the openSUSE distribution).
Else just sit back a bit , leaf thru the copious 11.4 documentation, and the 12.1 specific documentation will soon appear.
I confess even though I am a SuSE-Pro and then openSUSE user since 2001, and even though I test the milestone and release-candidate and beta versions of openSUSE, I prefer to wait 3 to 6 months before I install an openSUSE release on my main PC, by which time many many more bugs are fixed and there is more than copious version specific documentation.
BUT we do need users who dive in on release day, **so my many thanks **to those who dive in on day one and install (or update) to the latest openSUSE version as soon as it appears.
On 11/21/2011 01:56 AM, veganguy wrote:
> If you go to ‘openSUSE.org’
> (http://www.opensuse.org), there are three large bars, one green, one
> grey and one orange. Inside the green one is written, “learn more about
> opensuse with tutorials, documentation and more!” It sounds like they
> are trying to make it easy for beginners.
the “they” you are talking about are the folks who feed and care for the
Wiki…“they” are not here!
here you have the “they” who are the support forum of enthusiasts and
volunteers … users helping users … we here in install-boot-login
have nothing with the design and maintenance of the Wiki…
since you are not looking for technical help (you said so yourself) and
only wish to complain about the Wiki–please talk directly to those
folks (and call them liars and poor web site designers, or bait and
switch artist if you wish) they are not so hard to find:
On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 06:16:04 +0000, memilanuk wrote:
> veganguy;2407370 Wrote:
>> With my limited intellect…
>
> Should have stopped right there; pretty much sums it up.
Everyone needs to calm down - let’s not get personal here.
To the OP, if you have questions about how to use openSUSE, please feel
free to do so. But starting a thread with the subject you did here is
inflammatory and is unlikely to get you the assistance you’re looking for.
If things don’t calm down, we’re going to close this thread down.