[ANNOUNCE] Tiny Core Linux for XO-1 and XO-1.5

[James Cameron]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 10:08:09PM -0700, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:
> --- On Sun, 4/25/10, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
> > Cool.? Looks like quite a bit of invested time
> > required if anyone wants
> > to use this ... 
> 
> ??? 
> could you clarify on the time investment?

Your documentation was not easily used.  It was complex and difficult.

> You just need to expand the tarball in an ext2/3 formated stick that
> should either have a specific label or edit the olpc.fth with the
> stick label. 

You mean the filesystem label, not the stick label?  It was unclear from
the instructions.

> Is this the time investment you are referring to or I miss something else?
> Recommendations for "less involved" installation? (I do not like dd
> variants as it may ruin the media)

I'll review your instructions for you, so that you can improve them.

Your announcement in this thread pointed me to
http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/TinyCore_for_XO1/Announce%20tc-xo_02%20for%20the%20XO-1.txt

Suggestions:

1.  shorten the URL, since it is somewhat long and doesn't fit into a
typical 80-column window,

2.  remove unnecessary spaces, since they make it harder to convey,

Next step is reviewing the content.  The announcement didn't include an
"Installing" or "Using" section, it only included a "ChangeLog",
"About", and "Known Issues".  In the "About" section it referred the
reader to a previous announcement.  Suggestions:

3.  add a section in the content that explains how to use what you have
built, "Install" or "Installation",

4.  don't refer outside the document unless there's a good reason to do
so; it makes installing harder if multiple documents must be accessed,

5.  make sure changes are kept inside the change log section (e.g. the
mention of Opera should go there rather than in "About"),

6.  use HTML or a markup language that doesn't require sideways
scrolling; in viewing your .txt file in Firefox the horizontal scrollbar
was needed, and it was very hard to read the lines because they were not
wrapped early,

Next step is reviewing the content that was referred to ... which is
file
http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/TinyCore_for_XO1/Announce%20tc-xo_01%20for%20the%20XO-1.txt
but I could not tell what part of that file was now incorrect for your
version 02.  I presumed I only had to look at the "Installation" section
... Suggestions:

7.  explain where the "build_script" folder is, and what "build you own"
means in the context of "Installation",

8.  explain how to change the label of an ext2 filesystem on a USB
stick; tune2fs -L perhaps?

And can you explain *here* (not there) what it is about dd that makes
you think it damages media?

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/