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This point is one that cannot be overstated: > Great documentation is a top priority. The built-in man pages are amazing. So if you're stuck on anything, searc
by notalaser 10y ago
This point is one that cannot be overstated:
> Great documentation is a top priority. The built-in man pages are amazing. So if you're stuck on anything, searching the man pages on your own computer is going to give you a better answer than searching Google. (This makes it nicer to work offline, too.)
The OpenBSD documentation is absolutely stellar. It's well-structured, always up to date, has useful pointers and examples. If something is in base, then it's documented and you can use it today.
I still use Linux a lot (especially at work, I basically write Linux software for a living) and I've used it for a really long time (15 years, if not more), but I still regularly find myself reaching for a bookmark, or for Google, or for a bunch of notes I kept around because it took me hours to find out how to do <something> and never again.
In contrast, you can comfortably use and administer an OpenBSD box without needing anything but the man pages that ship with it. They're amazing.
It's not a "Linux is for plebs and it sucks" thing, it's just that serious documentation takes a back seat in its community (there are exceptions, but they're few and distro-specific). In contrast, the OpenBSD community encourages a culture where "good documentation" is part of "good software", not just something you get bonus points for.
In fact, despite how the media portrays it (usually through random quotes from Theo), the OpenBSD community is a refreshing island of sanity in today's computing field.
- davidgerard 10y agoWhen I was a fresh new Solaris sysadmin in 2001, cast adrift as the only sysadmin when three people above me were made redundant all at once, I would read the Solaris man pages for the details ... but first I'd read the OpenBSD man pages to understand what the command was supposed to do.
- davidcollantes 10y agoDo you know how to add coloring to the man pages? I have tried: https://gist.github.com/boredzo/06271944983864da495d303638351ca8 https://gist.github.com/boredzo/06271944983864da495d30363835... to no avail. I have played with all terminals, with more, with less, nothing affects the results.
- notalaser 10y agoI had no idea you could even get coloured manpages :-). Sorry, I don't know what to say.
- groovy2shoes 10y agoOpenBSD switched to its own version of man(1) a while back (it's called "mandoc", previously "mdocml" [0]). mandoc's own documentation is excellent and, if it supports color at all, it's likely documented in its own manpage (and also probably on its homepage). Note that if you're using the OpenBSD vtty (via wscons(4), at least), the default $TERM is `vt100`, which does not support color (beyond the cyan used to render italic text). I've had some luck setting $TERM to `vt220` to get more colors. In an xterm or something, this shouldn't be an issue. An alternative would be to install some other version of `man` (you'll probably also need `groff` from ports, though some other implementation of troff/nroff might also work). Frankly, though, I haven't seen colorized manpages before, so I'm not sure what else to tell you. [0]: http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ http://mdocml.bsd.lv/