Right ho, the subject says it all ...  Linux could definitely do with a
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions for all you who haven't been on the net
all your life :-).  And as I'm sure anybody who has read my "help-files"
would agree, I'm not the best possible person to write it.  Thus a new
project: getting a FAQ done with help from the linux-activists.

I've talked (yes, you can try to talk with me if I'm logged in) with
Robert Blum, and he's promised to help. Our idea was to get as many of
the linux users/would be users to ask questions they think ought to be
in the FAQ, and hopefully you could try to answer them too (and don't be
shy just because you aren't certain you get it right - I'll go through
the FAQ for techical soundness anyway, but your answers will make
editing much easier).

I'm especially interested in some tutorials/"true stories" from people
who installed linux without the help of minix.  Not only will they help
make the FAQ, but I could try to make things easier for the next
version.  The FAQ should also contain some pointer to what people are
doing, and what has been done (like init/login, the bison port, g++,
etc).

I guess the easiest way to organize this thing is to mail me with a
subject containing "FAQ".  I'll then compile it to one big thing and
send it out to whoever wants to edit on it.  If you want to be one of
the people working on it, please mail and say so.  I'll be happier the
less I have to do with this thing :-), and even if you just think you
could try to check for things you find incomprehensible, mail me and
tell me you'd like to help with it.  Alternatively, you can mail Robert
Blum (whom I happily let take over the main responsibility for this
thing if he wants it) at "blum@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de". 

If you can get your grubby little hands on the minix FAQ, you could try
to make a skeleton one for linux, trying to answer the questions
yourself first, and adding/removing questions of your own.  Also, please
resend the questions you've already asked (and hopefully got answered),
as I really cannot sift through all my mail looking for questions, and
rewriting the answers (my mailbox is about 400kB - most of it on linux). 
Editing the whole thing would probably be easier if you did some
pre-editing yourself: trying to get the thing to look like part of a
FAQ. 

After we have gotten something that looks like a real FAQ (possibly
divided it into several parts: one general FAQ, one on installation
etc), I (or Blum) will post it to the mailing-list and set it up for
ftp.  It will take some time: waiting for questions, then editing them,
mailing the new versions to the persons interested in this project,
revising them again after comments ...  But hopefully we'll have a
better FAQ after that.  I hope enough people mail questions/interest,
that I personally can get on to write the system programs.

I'd suggest a simple form for all the questions/answers: Something that
can easily be (semi-)automatically edited into something more
appropriate:

<empty line>
QUESTION: Xxx xx x x x xxx xxx xx xxx?
<empty line>
ANSWER: try to have some kind of skeleton answer here.
<empty line>

If you honestly haven't got a clue about the answer, please still ask
the question - nobody will flame you (sure, sure).

		Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. It seems most people who had problems have got it working now. To
summarize: It works on SX's and with only 2M of memory. It also "works"
with a monochrome card, but you won't be able to see anything. Mtools
doesn't understand DOS 5.0 (big partitions at least), but Linux seems to
boot ok anyway. Anybody who simply cannot get it to boot out there?

PPS. I wrote over my minix-partition yesterday (don't even ask why -
some things are better forgotten :-), and although I got minix-386 up
and running again, it's kind of limping now (no bash, no make). It seems
I'll have to write fdisk/mkfs/fsck for linux just so that I wouldn't
need minix any more. Something good came out of it.

PPPS. As there still isn't a fsck-program for linux, be very careful
about rebooting the computer without syncing. The buffer cache is /at
least/ 500kB, and 1.5M buffer-cache is normal for machines with more
memory, so if you don't sync, there could be A LOT of buffers that
aren't written out to disk.