On Fri, 16 May 2025 10:11:04 +0100 "Jonathan Dowland" <j...@debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu May 15, 2025 at 5:45 PM BST, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > one of the problems I see in the world of GNU/Linux is this > > tendency to have "per-distribution" documentation for thing which > > are not specific to a distribution, as evidenced by the fact that > > Debian users often find the Arch wiki useful. > > I agree that the Debian Wiki should strive to document > Debian-specific stuff. I recently deleted (sort-of) the page > DotFiles¹, after a brief discussion on this list a month ago, because > it was out-of-date with respect to Greg's wiki² and not really > distribution specific (although there are distribution specific > quirks, that Greg documents). > > [1] https://wiki.debian.org/DotFiles > [2] https://mywiki.wooledge.org/DotFiles > Basically agreed, but for example, my last use of the wiki was after the notification about apt sources. I needed to know from scratch what to do about it. That was entirely Debian-specific, but some tasks need a lot of general information for a beginner, and it isn't all that practical to send the user off to find this general information from the Net and then come back to the Debian document for specifics. A matter of balance and personal judgement by the writer is needed. Obviously this thread concerns who needs what, and I have generally used the wiki to learn how to do something that I have previously known nothing about, so I would look for very basic information to begin with. I'd want to start by seeing 'how Debian does it'. If it's a subject I already know something about, perhaps from years ago, I'd generally go straight to the Net to find the most up to date details from a forum, often the Ubuntu one. -- Joe
