Newbie Question - about newbie user support

[Jason C. Wells]

KAYVEN RIESE wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, christopher wrote:
> 
>>> Where would be the right place to go looking to
>>> subscribe to a newbie level user-support list?
>>> Perhaps rephrased 'complete newbie user support list'
>>> ... LOL
> 
> I just felt like chiming in.  It has seemed to me that
> freebsd-hacker is a nice intermediate list.  Less volume,
> and wtf does 'hacker' mean?  in other words, it seems open
> to wide variety of questionings.  I have been running freeBSD
> for only a few years myself, and I still need to muster
> up more courage for kernel builds and cvsup, but I am feeling
> that I am making progress.  To tell the truth, I wouldn't
> mind someone else chiming in on their understanding about
> what "freebsd-hacker" is for.

There are descriptions of the purposes of all the lists posted in a 
couple places.

http://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAIL
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers

A few quotes for your convenience:

Re -hackers

This is a forum for technical discussions related to FreeBSD. This is 
the primary technical mailing list. It is for individuals actively 
working on FreeBSD, to bring up problems or discuss alternative 
solutions. Individuals interested in following the technical discussion 
are also welcome.

General lists: The following are general lists which anyone is free (and 
encouraged) to join:

Technical lists: The following lists are for technical discussion. You 
should read the charter for each list carefully before joining or 
sending mail to one as there are firm guidelines for their use and content.

So -hackers really isn't a place for newbies.  Newbies should subscribe 
to -questions.  This was the first list I subscribed to back in the day.

A hacker is person who writes code in the context of this discussion. 
(The first person to quote the jargon file earns minus one pedantic.)

Building the world isn't that hard really. FreeBSD has done a great job 
making it mostly a fire and forget operation.  As long as you stay in 
the shallow end it's easy.  It's when you start tinkering with your 
makefiles and your sources that it gets fun.

Later,
Jason