Ubuntu Maker Canonical Planning To Vastly Improve Its Documentation

[ElectricPrism]

Well if going by the LTT video and how apparently Windows refugees do things, you can no longer write documentation since that implies using a terminal, now a days you are forced to create YouTube videos instead showing users where to click and when.

Ah yes, YouTube -- the most dependable place to put important things.

[bug77]

Ah yes, YouTube -- the most dependable place to put important things.

YouTube is for old guys. If you want to be cool, you put your documentation on TikTok!

[domih]

My two cents:

1. Steal a few authors and editors from the major computing book publishers by paying them much better. This will bring you good professional editorial quality.
2. Allow users to post comments on each page. Hire social networking and technical moderators to handle and eliminate BS posts, ad posts and long tempest in a tea cup useless discussions, fix and correct posts that are alternative facts.
3. Date everything.

[humor]And make sure to delete any paragraph that starts with "<package_name> is a simple but yet powerful..."[/humor]

CONCLUSION: Put real money into it.

[F.Ultra]

Ah yes, YouTube -- the most dependable place to put important things.

It's the only solution since the Windows Refugees apparently see the terminal as the illegal spawn of satan.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

YouTube is for old guys. If you want to be cool, you put your documentation on TikTok!

They should make every piece of documentation an NFT

[Paradigm Shifter]

I don't think I've ever found a solution to a problem I've been having in the Ubuntu documentation, or on the forums. I have, on occasion, found solutions on the Mint forums, on the Manjaro forums and on stackoverflow... but most solutions seem to come from the Arch Wiki. I've found the Gentoo Wiki useful at times (some parts of it, like Sakaki's install guide are amazing).

But I miss the days when I could get hard-copy docs that were actually worth using.

There was a reason I bought physical, boxed copies of SuSE when I actually started getting into Linux (rather than just dabbling around with the version of Mandrake which came on a cover CD)... and that was because a full snapshot of the repos came on something daft like 5 DVDs and two phonebook-like texts accompanied them which covered just about everything in painful detail.

[Ironmask]

The effort is commendable. I'm pretty skeptical they're actually going to achieve the goal of matching/succeeding the Arch wiki, Canonical isn't exactly a stranger to making big promises with no payoff. But if they can manage it then that would be great. Documentation for software in general is usually non-existant.

It's the only solution since the Windows Refugees apparently see the terminal as the illegal spawn of satan.

If you're wondering why nobody enjoys using Linux, you're part of the problem.
Every time I hear someone say they don't want to use Linux, it's almost always because of the community. Even if it was because they broke something and didn't want to bother with it anymore, it usually ends in a footnote of "I asked for help and everyone just called me a retard."
I'm so sorry these heathens haven't practiced enough of His Holy Operating System to deserve salvation.

[Paradigm Shifter]

If you're wondering why nobody enjoys using Linux, you're part of the problem.
Every time I hear someone say they don't want to use Linux, it's almost always because of the community. Even if it was because they broke something and didn't want to bother with it anymore, it usually ends in a footnote of "I asked for help and everyone just called me a retard."
I'm so sorry these heathens haven't practiced enough of His Holy Operating System to deserve salvation.

I mostly, but not entirely agree... although I will definitely agree that a lot of "communities" are quite toxic in general - it's not just a Linux issue. I've signed up to a few forums and left in short order due to the cliquish behaviour and sometimes virulent snobbery.

More experienced users are in a bubble, that is true. But try asking a Windows expert how to fix something and if it's not something fairly simple or already got a Windows Update fix it will likely require a trip into the registry and/or some powershell invocation, which aren't really any friendlier than a Linux/BSD terminal.

When I started using Linux, as I mentioned above, I wasn't scared to try to figure stuff out myself, or head toward documentation. I have four friends/family who I have convinced, over the years, to switch to Linux (one when Vista ended support, one when Windows XP support ended, two when Windows 7 support ended) because they really don't do anything more than check e-mail, do a bit of browsing and occasionally help edit the village newsletter. I get the occasional call regarding support, but far fewer than from family who continue to use Windows.

The modern internet makes it easy to just run for help the second anything happens. I've been pleasantly surprised in one of those cases where, except for when they got a new laptop and installed Xubuntu by themselves (I was so proud) and SecureBoot tripped them up, they've been content to tinker, search and ask (usually me first, the internet is scary)... but one family member who uses Windows every time they call with a problem asks me, "Right or left click?" when I say, "Click on..."; no matter how many times I explain that "click" means "left click" and I will explicitly state "right click" when necessary... they'll ask that same question every time I try to help them with a problem.

Anyway, I digress. My point (I had one?) is that instant gratification has pervaded every part of modern life. Different people learn differently. Some learn by doing. Some learn by memorisation. Some seem to actively resist trying to learn because it is considered "uncool" or "geeky" or whatever. The last is incredibly frustrating. Worse, a frighteningly large number of people I encounter want something right then and the idea of waiting - or worse, not getting - just never occurs.

Linux is usually pretty willing to let you do some fairly dumb stuff without smacking your metaphorical wrist and exclaiming, "No! Bad idea! Silly!" People don't learn by just mindless copypasta to do something. I can pretty much guarantee that if I copypasta something off the internet, I flat out won't remember it for the future. If I work it out myself, chances are it'll stick. Some of it is repetition; muscle memory "ls -ltr" trips me up in a Windows command line which expects "dir /t:w".

Anyway, part of the issue ("I asked for help and everyone called me a retard.") is because a lot of these questions are, indeed, asked again and again and again and again and now people expect personalised service from everything for everything. If the forum welcome message asks, "Please read the FAQ, it covers a lot of common questions!" and someone doesn't and asks questions number one in the FAQ... yeah, after a few repetitions of that, even those who want to help will get irritated.

The thing I find funniest about it all is that family still on Windows whine endlessly about the Windows 10 Settings menu and how they can't find anything because it's all moved around and they were used to the XP/7 Control Panel... Microsoft, in attempting to make configuration less scary, have actually made it more convoluted.

Huh. That was a lot longer than I expected it to be and I still don't think I've entirely explained what I wanted to say correctly.

[yoshi314]

They should make every piece of documentation an NFT

some dude made nft out of first commit to git source code tree. it's getting ridiculous.

[skeevy420]

If you're wondering why nobody enjoys using Linux, you're part of the problem.
Every time I hear someone say they don't want to use Linux, it's almost always because of the community. Even if it was because they broke something and didn't want to bother with it anymore, it usually ends in a footnote of "I asked for help and everyone just called me a retard."
I'm so sorry these heathens haven't practiced enough of His Holy Operating System to deserve salvation.

How people feel when they ask help on Linux: