From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758656AbdEAQBP (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 May 2017 12:01:15 -0400 Received: from mout02.posteo.de ([185.67.36.66]:33876 "EHLO mout02.posteo.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758616AbdEAQBH (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 May 2017 12:01:07 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] README: Find more sane first words we have to say about Linux To: Jonathan Corbet References: <20170430201135.11603-1-martink@posteo.de> <20170501092440.58c28368@lwn.net> Cc: mchehab@kernel.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Martin Kepplinger Message-ID: Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 18:01:02 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20170501092440.58c28368@lwn.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Am 2017-05-01 um 17:24 schrieb Jonathan Corbet: > On Sun, 30 Apr 2017 22:11:35 +0200 > Martin Kepplinger wrote: > >> Imagine you're completely new to Linux, just real quick, ok? What do you do? >> Wouldn't having a look at README be under first if no *the* first thing? >> Ah there it is: README. "Linux kernel". nice! So what's that? >> "This file was moved to ...... Please notice that there are several....". >> Wtf!? Why? Can't they just tell me what's going on like a normal person? > > So I don't doubt we could put something better there, but can we think for > a moment about who the audience is here? If you're "completely new to > Linux", will you really start by jumping into the kernel source tree? > Somehow I'm not quite convinced... It seems to me that the README file > should be aimed at developers who know what the kernel is but are not yet > familiar with the process of configuring and building it. > It should definitely be aimed at developers. But even as a developer who is completely new to kernel development, it's nice to have some broad context in 2 or 3 lines first. (again, I'm a little exaggerating and) trying to see from an outside point of view: What other "official brief definition" of what Linux is could there be? Right now one has the impression that the Linux Foundation has "official" information, but that's (very strictly speaking) pretty random right? Besides developers, I can imagine technical literature to have a look at projects' README files for that. I mean there *is* the new README.rst which is awesome. But it wouldn't hurt to summarize the first few things in the README and then refer to the doc. It should be something for people who * already checked out the source obviously (developers, but or technical authors, or any interested engineer), and * who would *maybe* say, "what? nothing in the README? ok. I'll take some definition I found online then" and not bother reading the Documentation directory just yet. martin