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Old 20th July 2008
Pollywog Pollywog is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi View Post
Don't follow "HowTo" documents. That said, you can learn from them, and use them to provide some direction, or perhaps areas to research. It is safest to assume from the outset that the person who wrote the document:
  • Was relatively new to OpenBSD when they wrote it.
  • Was not a professional instructor or technical writer, and therefore they did not "level-set" all of the required background necessary to understand the steps taken.
  • Thought that any reader's environment would match theirs exactly.
  • Never fully explained the details of any commands they show, why they suggested their particular command set, or what each command actually does. (I've seen an OpenBSD "Howto" where the author said that they did not understand what a command they recommended actually did, but that it was a necessary step. If you come across one of those, stop reading it. )
I think you are right. Many of the Howto's that I see will have a statement like "This is what I did and it finally works" like they did a trial-and-error install and then based their Howto on that.

I read the section of the FAQ that pertains to FLAVORS and I think I will stick with the packages until I understand OpenBSD better. I have used one or two other ports when packages were not available and didn't have any problems with those.
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