Re: hand book idea

On 01/19/14 14:41, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 11:24:15PM -0500, wireless wrote:
>> Well I've been noodling around quite a lot
>> with all sorts of installs. I like the Grub2(section 10)
>> and GPT(Section 4) inlays in the handbook. But, you might
>> consider using gptfdisk (gdisk) in the handbook
>> in lieu of fdisk or in addition to fdisk for
>> gpt setups. It's already on the minimal install iso
>> (sys-apps/gptfdisk-0.8.6), and works fine from the
>> command line.....

> There are many partitioning tools "out there". I wouldn't mind adding info
> on it, but on the other hand I've been noticing that the installation
> instructions are getting more and more cluttered due to the set of "choices"
> users have.

Well, I agree with this clutter assessment. Rather than the current 
layout, it would be great if only the default (minimal) instructions 
first appeared in the handbook. The additional options or choices, could 
be viewed if the titlebar is "cliqued to expand" these alternate views. 
I'm not sure the current handbook can do that, or if it has to wait on 
new (wiki) features. Auto-jumping, via some mechanism or
via section numbers and subsection numbers in a more robust scheme,
is warranted too.

Another related issue with the flat appearance of the handbook,
is that there are 2 types of section numbers  that cause confusion 
if/when you need to jump from a given section to the next logical 
section. Take section 10 for example.  "10.b. Using GRUB2" is next 
followed by "Code Listing 2.2: Installing ..." Furthermore One would 
think that "10.a." - "10.e." are each options that you only choose one 
of. But in fact "10.e." must (should) be followed regardless of the boot 
system chosen (10 b -d). Reorganization and hiding (expanding) non 
critical options would be keen, imho.

How this is achieved would very much depends on what mechanisms are 
available for the current(future?) versions of the handbook (wiki?).


> Users are of course free to use the partitioning tool they like. For GPT
> partitions, we currently only document "parted" - is this not sufficient?
> Would gptfdisk be needed in certain cases?

Well, imho gptfdisk could replace fdisk? It auto handles disks larger 
than 2T and supports many more features. This would not be for me to
decide; I'd feel better about other folks chiming in, who have actually
tried gptfdisk (gdisk), as it on the minimal install iso, before 
replacing fdisk with gptfdisk.

It's an idea, that can be discussed, as fdisk is quite antiquated
and limited, imho.

James