DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Improved self -learning help . (wiki/howto/tutor)

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since dsl is cut to it's size (50Mb). most of the apps are using mydsl. mydsl is fine but it has it's limit. not all apps will be included in mydsl.

I'm not sure your frame of reference since you brought up Gentoo before, but comparing Gentoo (a source-based distro) to DSL (a binary-based distro) is apples and oranges. DSL isn't monolithic in the sense that it's a live CD; it's also not limited to binary extensions (MyDSL, Debian via apt-get) since there are compilers that allow users to compile their own apps and utilities.

DSL comes with just about everything most people need: file management tools, text editing and word processing apps, internet tools like browsers and an e-mail client, file transfer utilities like ftp, and so on. MyDSL extensions allow DSL to be treated more modularly and customized. You need more power than Ted? Go get abiword or Open Office. You want support for non-free multimedia codecs? There are apps there for that. Etc. But it's very useful as it is on the CD.

As jpeters wrote in his reply and as you previously noted, documentation for each app is widely available online. As convenient as it would be to post step-by-step instructions to suit every user's needs, it's just not practical. It would also be overly redundant (something which is at odds with the DSL philosophy).

If you think there's a shortcoming in the wiki, please add to it. That's why it's there.

And as far as "not all apps will be available," they're not all available in any other distro, either. The nature of open source is such that new apps pop up all the time, old ones don't continue development, and very few people can keep up with everything in between. If there's an app you want in MyDSL, try making it yourself. The extensions are community-driven.

There are reasons Gentoo has such extensive documentation compared to, say, Slackware or DSL. First, Gentoo is source-based and has proven to be a difficult adjustment for most new users. Second, Gentoo attempts to be more like a BSD than a Linux distro. One of the areas where the BSDs have an edge over Linux is their man pages and related documentation, and Gentoo appears to subscribe to the old Unix philosophy that it's better to provide too much information than not enough. DSL, of course, strips man pages and gives you tools and browsers to find information online rather than on your CD or hard drive. Different strokes.

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for example like i was installing XFree86 it takes me around three days to make it working. i have to google use the search. it is more like a puzzle, i have to take pieces of it and combine it into one.

XFree86 can be a pain in the ___ (select appropriate body part) to configure regardless of how much documentation you have to start with. If you look at the info file for that extension, note that it has warnings in capital letters that it's not a plug and play extension; it also has links for more information. I hope you noticed all that before you started.

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in the other hand to have a great wiki it is not such an easy task. most of the wiki's are contributed from it's community so it will take times to build a full wiki

Which is why it's up to people like you and me to fill in any glaring holes. Consider adding to it as you learn, especially if you successfully got XFree86 set up for your hardware. Take an active role.