Ubuntu Maker Canonical Planning To Vastly Improve Its Documentation

[F.Ultra]

Try to see that from the other side. Someone says they don't feel welcome to ask for help and you react by pumping out comments telling them to prove it with specific links to each and every bad experience they might have had, as if people keep catalogs of such things. You don't see how that could be interpreted as you sort of proving their point?

Depends entirely on how you word the question. What I did was ask "Wow how rude of them to reply in that way to a simple question, btw do you still have a link to the post so that we can see the context, would be funny to see."

The reason you and I might not experience the negative reactions that new users experience, might be because you and I are not new users. Perhaps it would be better for us to, instead of assuming that all these people are lying or exaggerating, perhaps try to understand why they feel that way. Then maybe we can improve.

Well the reason why I don't get such replies is because I never ask the questions, but the reason why this claim makes me somewhat upset is that I'm the one that often supply an answer to such questions and I have never replied in such manners.

[jo-erlend]

Yeah I keep on hearing those stories, in fact the LTT videos are full of people claiming this. Know what I did? I put a comment on some 60 of those comments asking for links to the forum or reddit posts where they had been met by toxicity and I get a whole 0 replies.

Try to see that from the other side. Someone says they don't feel welcome to ask for help and you react by pumping out comments telling them to prove it with specific links to each and every bad experience they might have had, as if people keep catalogs of such things. You don't see how that could be interpreted as you sort of proving their point?

The fact is that there is a mismatch between the over-hyping of everything Linux that we all know exists and the actual experience that new users experience. They've been told that everything is so simple and then, when it isn't, that can feel especially frustrating. And that can affect questions. Also, since they're inexperienced, they tend to not write very good questions, which can be met with a certain hostility in many Linux communities, partly because that is frustrating for those who are trying to help.

In my opinion, the worst part of what new users experience, is that everyone calls it "Linux", as if it's one system rather than many different systems, each consisting of many different components. So first, we train them to call it Linux. Then, when they ask «How can I open the control panel in Linux?», we refuse to give them an answer. Right? Because that question has no answer, so maybe we start explaining that they have to specify what kind of desktop environment they're using, but they have no clue because they're inexperienced.

The reason you and I might not experience the negative reactions that new users experience, might be because you and I are not new users. Perhaps it would be better for us to, instead of assuming that all these people are lying or exaggerating, perhaps try to understand why they feel that way. Then maybe we can improve.

[F.Ultra]

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.

Yeah I keep on hearing those stories, in fact the LTT videos are full of people claiming this. Know what I did? I put a comment on some 60 of those comments asking for links to the forum or reddit posts where they had been met by toxicity and I get a whole 0 replies.

There where also lots of people complaining about this and that not working in Ubuntu, so I asked several of them kindly a bit of info and if they wanted me to help them, again 0 replies.

I'm not saying that there are not some toxic Linux asshole on reddit (I mean it's on the Internet) but I do feel like much of the horror stories passed around is just that, stories. And many of the people who "tried to install Linux but then nothing worked" never ever did.

[jo-erlend]

Don't you hate when you skip writing a word on an unapproved post? Whenever it gets approved they're all gonna laugh at me.

Proactive censorship is evil. The fear of words themselves, regardless of meaning or context, is silly.

[skeevy420]

Don't you hate when you skip writing a word on an unapproved post? Whenever it gets approved they're all gonna laugh at me.

[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:

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.