5 ms·

Majority of the documentations I came across usually have the mantra of "Do this and you are golden". I know it is not dark wizardary, it just the documentation

Majority of the documentations I came across usually have the mantra of "Do this and you are golden". I know it is not dark wizardary, it just the documentations are aiming for someone who have the experience and the technical knowledge of this. Whereas there are people who are pushing "self-hosting is the answer! Even your tech-inept grandma can do it!" without providing documentations for inexperienced people like me. Annoyingly that some guides have parts that have a links to other guides that barely provide information about this. It is like "I know how to set it up but I am not gotta tell you how to do it, so here the link that might help" and it didn't help at all.

adrian_b 5y ago
When I have begun to install and manage servers, more than 20 years ago, I did not have any kind of prior experience and I did not have anyone whom I could ask. So I have just read the handbook, but I have read it completely, which needs more than a day. It is likely that there are also other operating systems and Linux distributions that have good documentation, but I can testify only about those that I have used in the beginning, the FreeBSD handbook and then the Gentoo Linux handbook. Both handbooks were good enough to convert anyone into a system administrator. Unfortunately, both handbooks are not as good in 2022 as they were e.g. in 2002, because they have not always been updated after every change, or the updates have not been as detailed as the original parts of the handbooks. Even so, both handbooks remain reasonably good today. Especially the FreeBSD handbook is good for someone who lacks experience, because FreeBSD is much more self-contained, i.e. there are a lot of choices that have already been made for you and you do not have to worry about them. So for someone who is inexperienced, I believe that the fastest way to managing a server remains to read the complete FreeBSD handbook and install and configure a server based on that. There are programs which are available only on Linux, but the administration of a Linux server requires much more work than for a FreeBSD server (even if much less than for a Windows server), so for a beginner I think that FreeBSD with its more complete documentation and less possible choices is easier to try.

adrian_b 5y ago

When I have begun to install and manage servers, more than 20 years ago, I did not have any kind of prior experience and I did not have anyone whom I could ask. So I have just read the handbook, but I have read it completely, which needs more than a day. It is likely that there are also other operating systems and Linux distributions that have good documentation, but I can testify only about those that I have used in the beginning, the FreeBSD handbook and then the Gentoo Linux handbook. Both handbooks were good enough to convert anyone into a system administrator. Unfortunately, both handbooks are not as good in 2022 as they were e.g. in 2002, because they have not always been updated after every change, or the updates have not been as detailed as the original parts of the handbooks. Even so, both handbooks remain reasonably good today. Especially the FreeBSD handbook is good for someone who lacks experience, because FreeBSD is much more self-contained, i.e. there are a lot of choices that have already been made for you and you do not have to worry about them. So for someone who is inexperienced, I believe that the fastest way to managing a server remains to read the complete FreeBSD handbook and install and configure a server based on that. There are programs which are available only on Linux, but the administration of a Linux server requires much more work than for a FreeBSD server (even if much less than for a Windows server), so for a beginner I think that FreeBSD with its more complete documentation and less possible choices is easier to try.