Ubuntu Maker Canonical Planning To Vastly Improve Its Documentation

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Maker Canonical Planning To Vastly Improve Its Documentation

Back in the day Ubuntu's Wiki was a great resource for Linux documentation but less so these days while the Arch Linux Wiki is often viewed as a gold standard for open-source documentation. Canonical though is now hoping to radically improve the documentation for Ubuntu and its other software offerings...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Better-Ubuntu-Docs-2021

[bug77]

They're probably just going to link to Arch :P

[CochainComplex]

They're probably just going to link to Arch :P

Even this would be better than the current situation

[Danielsan]

I use the state of documentation to evaluate the healthy state of a distro.

The ones that have excellent documentation like Arch, Gentoo or FreeBSD means that they are in a very good shapes, the ones that have messy, old and unverified documentation means that have some issues; for instance Debian even though has a decent handbook from the other side has serious problems with its wiki, Ubuntu used to have great documentation but it slowly faded out across the years...

[sdack]

... Or they just link to Stack Exchange and drop everything else.

[Ipkh]

They could start by simply putting dates on their wiki pages. It's damned hard to tell how out of date a page is if the date is hidden or hard to find. Or at least specify the versions being used.

[Vorpal]

I remember that back in the day (2007ish?), the Gentoo wiki was really good, even if you weren't using Gentoo. Looked at it recently and it was nowhere near any more.

The Arch wiki is indeed excellent, even if you aren't using Arch.

[waxhead]

They're probably just going to link to Arch :P

I am a Debian user, but the Arch wiki is my favorite go-to for just about anything!

[kaprikawn]

That's all well and good, and I applaud them for doing this. But if all their documentation directs people to 'install snap x' then it isn't going to be useful outside of Ubuntu. If it's general purpose and doesn't mention snaps too much it could be good.

[bug77]

I am a Debian user, but the Arch wiki is my favorite go-to for just about anything!

Yup. I used it back when I was on Kubuntu or Neon as well. But tbh, back then I would find helpful things on Ubuntu's wiki as well. If not as often.

Be that as it may, several wikis seem redundant. systemd, pulse, network manager are the same, regardless of the distro that uses them. They should be documented in one place and one place only. Distro wiki should only have to deal with distro specific configurations and other quirks.