리눅스를 배우려면 뭐부터 해야 하나?

내가 리눅스를 배우고 사용해 본지도 꽤나 시간이 흘렀다. 제대 후 여러 배포판을 깔아보고 커널 컴파일, 그리고 무선랜 사용과 같은 것들을 해보면서 하나 배운 것이 있었다. 그것은 바로… RTFM… 이게 무슨 말인지 무척이나 궁금했었다.

[Unix] Abbreviation for ‘Read The Fucking Manual’.

1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. Compare Don’t do that then!.
2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren’t just asking out of randomness. “No, I can’t figure out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM.” Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also FM, RTFAQ, RTFB, RTFS, STFW, RTM, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare UTSL.

머 어떻게 해석하면 좋을지 모르겠지만, 어쨋건 약간 무례한 표현이라 할 수 있겠다. 사실상 많은 매뉴얼이 존재하지만 그것조차 읽어보려 하지 않고 단지 뭐든지 물어보고 쉽게 해결하려는 사람에게 쓴다고 한다. 요즘 살아가면서 많이 느끼는 부분이다. 특히나 우리나라 리눅서들에게서 이런 경향을 많이 봤는데 인터넷을 뒤져보니 RTFM보다는 공손한 표현으로 UTSL라는 표현도 있다고 한다.

[Unix] Abbreviation for ‘Use the Source, Luke’
On-line acronym for ‘Use the Source, Luke’ (a pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi’s “Use the Force, Luke!” in Star Wars) ? analogous to RTFS (sense 1), but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven’t attracted wizards to answer them.

Once upon a time in elder days, everyone running Unix had source. After 1978, AT&T’s policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code (made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern.

Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed that anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is certainly Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD distributions running second. Cheap commercial Unixes with source such as BSD/OS are accelerating this trend.