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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing how brutal most programming tools are to install. I feel like I am alone amongst all the people I know in being the only one who doesn't have a clue about *nix's underpinnings, about what /etc/local is for, and so on.

I feel like a charlatan some days. On the other hand... I certainly can tell you if your "how to install" instructions are actually any good for reaching new programmers.

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Just because you used it as an example here are a few quick resources to help understand filesystem layouts a bit better.

A real quick overview:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

More in depth:

* http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

I prefer "man hier" at the command line. Much more succinct than either of those:

e.g. http://linux.die.net/man/7/hier

Cool! "TIL", as they say on reddit.

For non-redditers, TIL stands for "Today I Learned".

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/

Agreed, and man hier is always there if you forget something, don't have to go track it down on the web.

However, I found these useful too when I was learning it. Sometimes it just helps to read different explanations of the same thing till it sticks:

http://linuxcommand.org/lts0040.php

http://rute.2038bug.com/node20.html.gz

I feel the same. If you're lucky programs come with a readme.txt that explains the steps required to install it. Why the heck didn't they code that in shell script instead of english? It practically doubles the value of the software.

I used to not know that stuff. Then I installed Gentoo Linux, and was forced to learn it the hard way. I don't use Gentoo anymore, but installing it was like a crash course in how to get uncooperative Linux software to bend to my will.

This was years ago, so maybe Gentoo has become more user-friendly since then.

You're relentlessly modest.

Do you know C or would be interested in learning it?

I used Lightspeed C many years ago to write a plugin for Aldus PageMaker. I later used C++ to make Jprobe Threadalyzer, but the experience was very different.

So honestly, I do not think I know C in any non- trivial sense.

Would you be interested in being a test subject for a C book?

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