The LDP Weekly News – Feb 25, 2004

Issue Number : 8
Publication Date : 2004-02-25

Table of Contents
1. New documents @ TLDP
2. Documents submitted for review
3. New document proposals
4. Updated HOWTOs, FAQs and Guides
5. News in The LDP world
5.1. TLDP Mirrors
5.2. Status of the Kernel HOWTO
6. HOWTO contribute to TLDP

1. New documents @ TLDP

Feiyun Wang presents us with an interesting study guide annex source
commentary in his Linux i386 Boot Code HOWTO. The document has been designed as a guide to the i386
boot code for “kernel newbies”, explaining the different Makefiles, the
bootsector, how the compressed image is loaded and so on, all the way to how
the kernel is extracted, loaded and activated with the correct settings.

For kernel veterans the document is meant to be an overview and reference to
more advanced reading.

2. Documents submitted for review

* Eric S. Raymond submitted two updates to his documents, the UPS HOWTO and
the UNIX Hardware Buyer HOWTO.

3. New document proposals

* Sebastien Francois Is working on a HOWTO documenting the installation
of Debian on the Apple iBook G4. You can look at the first draft here –
posted to the submit mailinglist in enthusiasm, but Tabatha
indicated to Sebastien that document needs to go through the official
procedures first.

* Ian Bruntlett wants to do something about bad programming advice and asks
for your opinion about this HOWTO learn a programming language.

* Andrew Schulman proposes this Debian nVidia HOWTO as a replacement for the
existing
mini-HOWTO hosted at madcow404. Your comments will be greatly
appreciated.

4. Updated HOWTOs, FAQs and Guides

* John Eikenberry’s AI and
Alife HOWTO (v2.0 now) takes us on an introductory tour through different
systems that simulate intelligence. John explains about traditional
expert systems, neural networks and evolutionary computing, but also
touches on the subject of more complex methods such as Alife. This
document is certainly worth looking at if you want something else than
everyday application and coding for a change, and contains plenty of
links for further reading.

* David Horton’s Pocket
Linux Guide v2.1 contains bug fixes, corrections of typo’s and other
beauty fixes, and adds a couple of useful tips for automation and ease of
composition of your own mini-Linux. According to David, the Pocket Linux
Guide is an ideal preparation for those who want to build confidence to
explore larger and more complex source-code-only projects later on.

* Kris Karakas is proud to announce v2.0 of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO, which is with its 500+
pages actually becoming more of a guide, detailing almost every aspect of
PHP-Nuke.

5. News in The LDP world

5.1. TLDP Mirrors

Mirror maintenance has been pushed to the background the last year, because
our webmaster, Greg Ferguson, was way too overloaded with work to deal with
this. However, new volunteers have offered to take this job off of Greg’s
shoulders.

All sites mirroring TLDP will be contacted shortly to see if our info is
still up to date. Additionally, new mirror sites will once more be accepted.
Maintainers of mirror sites are encouraged to use rsync and are required to
send us the following information:

* Maintainer name

* Maintainer E-mail address

* Update frequency

* Location

Use the address for more info if you want to become a
TLDP mirror site.

5.2. Status of the Kernel HOWTO

It’s been a while since the decision to take the Kernel HOWTO off-line for
revision. Since we’re getting a lot of requests about this document, we
thought an overview of the progress might be appropriate.

* The last version of the Kernel HOWTO from Brian Ward can be downloaded
from our CVS repository at [http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/howto/

linuxdoc/Attic/Kernel-HOWTO.sgml?rev=1.20=MAIN=0=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup]

http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/howto/linuxdoc/Attic/

Kernel-HOWTO.sgml?rev=1.20=MAIN=0=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup.

* Kwan Lowe is writing the replacement, which is more or less finished and
browseable from [http://www.digitalhermit.com/~kwan/kernel.html] http://
www.digitalhermit.com/~kwan/kernel.html. Kwan changed the name to “Kernel
Rebuild Guide”.

* Brain Ward, the original author of the Kernel HOWTO, [http://www.o–o.net
/comp/kernel-howto/] plans to release an alternative document for the new
kernel.

6. HOWTO contribute to TLDP

The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is working on developing free, high
quality documentation for the GNU/Linux operating system. If you want to help
TLDP, consider joining .

Help us create this newsletter. We need volunteers who follow the community
(mailing lists, newsgroups, web channels) and report events related to free
software documentation. Write to us at .

The LDP Weekly News is compiled and edited by Machtelt Garrels and Y Giridhar
Appaji Nag with help from several other people.