The Insufferable State of Linux Documentation

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I’ve been waiting for a response from anyone from The Linux Documentation Project (tldp.org). Ghost town projects are normally not such a bad thing – often the page goes down and that’s the end of it. Some projects are worth abandoning, as they become obsolete and are replaced by better things.

However, The Linux Documentation Project has been an institution in the Linux Community since 1992. Many of its guides and howtos are still relevant – Linux.com using them is proof enough of that.

The project is in bad need of an overhaul, though. There’s little stylistic consistency between pages, the IRC channel (#tldp on freenode) is empty, the mailing lists are no longer a hotbed of activity. The simple steps of getting on the mailing list is made difficult by using an obsolete list program (Mailman could make signing up a snap). You cannot even get anonymous CVS access outside of their ancient CVS viewer.

Half of getting TLDP back on its feet won’t even be working with the guides or howto’s – it will be addressing the antiquated infrasture of the project itself.