Kill the Wiki

[Omega]

I say merge the wiki with the forum. Why even have a Wiki, because it looks cool? From my experience with wiki, I could have just as easily used the forum to find the same answers found in the wiki. Those topics have been covered in the forum numerous times, if only one would do a search they will see what I mean. I think if you do merge the two you should do it like JamesM, putting things in order. Starting with the Loader (explaining grub and rolling your own), then move on to IDT, GDT, Pmode, ISR, IRQ, PIT, KBC, PS2, MMU, VFS, FDD/HDD, VESA/Vm86, etc. Give users a guide to work with it instead of a bunch of resources for them to flip through and probably find what they are looking for, yet still confused as to where to start and where to go next. After all this is the self-proclaimed "Place to Start for Operating System Developers".

[suthers]

How exactly would you merge, the point of the forum is that the we can make posts in it and discuss..., We don't want to be bloated with the content of the wiki here....
I also fin a wiki a good form of information indexing... (though the search could be better ).
Just my opinion....
Jules

[Combuster]

The signal-to-noise ratio on the forums is way too high, there's lots of duplication, lots of problems that can be traced to simple programming errors. Even I regularly visit the wiki because I know exactly where to go to get whatever I need.

The wiki was originally created because the forums alone did not work.

[kmcguire]

Thats is an interesting thought, but when I think about it I realize the problem -- my opinion of course.

You have the forum with lots of threads that solve various problems. However, each thread that holds a solution may only solve part of a larger problem. This forces the user to search again to find the missing information on the topic. For example someone might find a solution to why they keep having a processor exception, but only to find another problem and a set of unexplained answers. Lets say the problem lies in their IDT. So they find a thread that explains that they did not set a flag correctly. Shortly after they experience another problem and they are once again searching.

If the articles in the Wiki are complete they will detail a lot more than one thread will normally cover. Information from the forums generally, or should, move into the Wiki over time. So that we have articles that are the equivalent of many threads. (multiple threads == one article)

A article covering the IDT may hold many answers to future potential and current problems, while a thread might only solve one. Not saying that a article is superior to a thread in the forum, but rather the article _should_ cover more and not to forget that the articles generally come from information in the forum threads. You know things not in the Wiki get asked, get answered, and sooner or later (should be) placed in the Wiki in a article.

[chase]

The wiki is a distillation of the best information from the forums. The wiki is relatively new compared to the forum which have been around for years and years. Over time the wiki will become a better source of information than the forums.

Eventually the wiki (or parts of it) will evolve in into a guide. For some of what will happen in the future you can take a look at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection I'm still in the early planning stages for this.... I'll talk more about it later.

[Alboin]

putting things in order

You apparently miss the idea of the wiki. It's not a 'guide' or 'tutorial', but a place for information. It's not just to help the complete newbie, but to provide a quick access to information for anyone, advanced or otherwise.

Give users a guide to work with it instead of a bunch of resources for them to flip through and probably find what they are looking for, yet still confused as to where to start and where to go next.

There are many beginner guides that work fine. At some point, the newbie has to grow up and learn to work on his own. He has to learn to work from just tech docs and develop his own ideas. Tutorials are great for an intro into osdev, but other than that they're pretty useless.

[suthers]

putting things in order

You apparently miss the idea of the wiki. It's not a 'guide' or 'tutorial', but a place for information. It's not just to help the complete newbie, but to provide a quick access to information for anyone, advanced or otherwise.

Give users a guide to work with it instead of a bunch of resources for them to flip through and probably find what they are looking for, yet still confused as to where to start and where to go next.

There are many beginner guides that work fine. At some point, the newbie has to grow up and learn to work on his own. He has to learn to work from just tech docs and develop his own ideas. Tutorials are great for an intro into osdev, but other than that they're pretty useless.

It's there to help people if they need it, if you don't want it then fine, I personally use it quite often.... and if that makes me a newbie, then fine....
I think that there are many more who find it useful than people who find it is a waste of space....
Jules

[Omega]

It's a cool thing to have if it is utilized correctly. As of now the resources you do have lack many details. If you compare it to a wikipedia page about the same topic you will see that the wikipedia entry will be much more informative. Which proves to me that using the best of what the forum has may not be the best practice. I believe the standards must be higher because the alternative is right now better. The wiki's here are much to theoretical than they should be and they often echo other published works, so basically you have a fancy blog.

I would structure from the loader to disk access. I would:

Start Here
01. What is OS Development?
02. Setting up the Working Environment
03. Media Resources

Bootstrapping
01. Booting with GRUB
02. Rolling your Own

Kernel Development
01. Setting up the Environment
02. Memory Management
03. Writing Generic Drivers

Debugging
01. Dumping the Symbols
02. Debugging with Bochs

References
01. Opcodes
02. Scancodes
03. VGA Colors
04. Intel Manual
05. Ralph Brown's INT

This is obviously incomplete, but something like that would be great. Each of course being a root with various sub-levels. Each sub-level would be described practically as if it where a Lab with examples and demonstrations proving what is claimed. I would use NASM and GCC for code examples and always provide an image/object, linker script, and make file. I would also remind them at the end of each topic that the next step is (so and so), so that they will know where to go next (if the layout of the menu is unclear).

Really all you need is something more clearly arranged and practical (web 2.0-ish) and you will be the Place to Start for OS Dev. Good luck!

[bewing]

Just try to find the information that I put into the ATA_PIO_Mode article in wikipedia. You won't find even a fraction.
Or my Memory_Detection_(x86) article. You also won't find anything like the number of code examples on wikipedia. The wikipedia articles are completely lacking in the vital details that are the things that drive you insane while you are trying to build an OS.

And as far as searching the forums goes -- there are too many threads in the forums to search, unless you are looking for something very specific. When I am writing a wiki article on a topic, I do several searches. It takes me a couple of DAYS to read all the threads returned by those searches. Most of the threads contain MISTAKES. Especially since every thread starts with someone making a mistake.

The info in the wiki will have far fewer errors than the forums. The wiki will be nicely cross-hyperlinked. The wiki will have links to good references. Reading one wiki article will be far faster than reading all the results of a forum search. As chase says, it will be a distillation of the best guru-wisdom on every topic.

[Omega]

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because I totally appreciate what you guys have done and continue to do for free. I only made this suggestion to help persuade you to better use the resources you already have. When do you think the wiki will work like that? Will it be categorized denoting where to start and where to go next? Will there be tried and true examples? As for the forum, if you search the forum using google it is much easier to find stuff. You should just write a page crawler that looks for keywords and saves the link to another file which you could then use to navigate through. I think it would be faster for you bewing if you also make an interface for your list.

Anyway, I love the forum. It has a crap load of information in it. I just hope you find a way to make that information easier to find and more ordered. I think the point of a place like this on the web should be to convert user-mode coders to kernel developers, so every resource should be geared toward the developing of that developer. That's all.

[Alboin]

As for the forum, if you search the forum using google it is much easier to find stuff. You should just write a page crawler that looks for keywords and saves the link to another file which you could then use to navigate through. I think it would be faster for you bewing if you also make an interface for your list.

You have read the post by bewing, haven't you? The forum has errors and useless information. The job of the wiki is to reduce that as much as possible, and beef up on the useful info, taking many threads into account all at the same time in one article.

I think the point of a place like this on the web should be to convert user-mode coders to kernel developers, so every resource should be geared toward the developing of that developer. That's all.

Exclusively gearing everything to any one thing is generally a very bad idea. (Think about creating a massive program with MFC, and then having to use it on Mac. Exactly.) The nice part about having plain, straightup information without the formalities of some pretty tutorial speak is that everyone can use it. Not just a single group.

Abstraction is love.

[piranha]

One thing I like about the wiki is if I have nothing to do, or am having coder's block, I'll just brows it. That jump-starts many ideas.

I like the wiki. It's still in progress. The one problem that I can think of is that once the wiki is finished, half will be obsolete. If we can dedicate to working on adding more info and keeping old info up to date, we will have a great resource.

-JL

[chase]

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because I totally appreciate what you guys have done and continue to do for free. I only made this suggestion to help persuade you to better use the resources you already have. When do you think the wiki will work like that? Will it be categorized denoting where to start and where to go next? Will there be tried and true examples? As for the forum, if you search the forum using google it is much easier to find stuff. You should just write a page crawler that looks for keywords and saves the link to another file which you could then use to navigate through. I think it would be faster for you bewing if you also make an interface for your list.

Anyway, I love the forum. It has a crap load of information in it. I just hope you find a way to make that information easier to find and more ordered. I think the point of a place like this on the web should be to convert user-mode coders to kernel developers, so every resource should be geared toward the developing of that developer. That's all.

The mods and I have already been talking about some of this. The wiki is currently very free-form and non-linear and I don't expect that to change. This is both good and bad. Good because it is very agile, short of the main page there is very little interconnected information which means a page can specialize on a particular topic and cover it very well. A new page can be created without worrying about how it fits in to some big monolithic structure. Basically it fits in to the meaning of "wiki" perfectly. Once you are in the middle of working on your own OS it is usually more useful if there is a specific article covering the new feature/hardware that your are working on instead of trying to dig through something with a traditional book structure. One thing it does very well is evolve. The world doesn't need another boot sector tutorial. If there is something lacking with the boot sector tutorial in the wiki instead of creating another one you can just enhance what is there. Like I said, our wiki hasn't been around as long as the forums, it needs more time to evolve.

The problem is that it doesn't have good flow. This is actually causing a problem because new members haven't gotten used to all the searching that is required before making a post which leads to a lot of RTFM and STFW responses. We do need something that reads more like a traditional book at some point with a logical progression through topics. But you never ever get this just by making a wiki for a community to edit. It requires a lot of structure and management. Basically I think at some point we could also use a wiki as the collaborative editor for an OS Development guide. The guide might end up being a separate wiki instance or maybe even docbook.xml in an osdev svn repo. I've got a lot more thinking and planning to do for this but rest assured you aren't the first person to think the wiki is missing some type of sequence.

[Omega]

Exactly, but I wasn't going to say you should do it in another form, mainly because I wanted you to figure that on your own. The Wiki is no good for that type of thing; by nature. You would need to create a separate service for this. I also suggest asking help from a web developer/designer, because it is apparent that you are a strict engineer type as you described a web application as if it were an OS... lol.

I write in PHP, ASP, SQL, JavaScript, a little Perl, some AJAX experience, HTML, and CSS. I specialize in security, so I can write secure scripts and test it the right way! I am super awesome at Photoshop, you know my site Chase, I did all the work/design on it, even the logo. If you haven't looked then go look; do you remember the address? I can help you build the template, help with functionality, layout, code, etc. I also saw a post about the OSDEV logo, I'd like to give that a shot if that's OK and if you will take my work seriously (as in actually consider using it). Let me know.

I know the RTFM, but what is STFW? Is it like STFU? lol

Also, do any of you guys play Counter Strike Online?

[Solar]

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