Thoughts on a UM manual

Thoughts & Feedback
#1

I was thinking on having a manual or book or complied documentation or … what ever you want to call it. It would be a great resource for new to Linux/UbuntuMate users.

My first idea was either a GoogleDoc or a Git repo so that there can be a team to do the edits.

Good idea? Bad Idea? Ideas???

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Security sub forum?
#2

There is “MATE user guide” in MATE 1.10

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#3

Ideas

Why
When I re-entered the world of linux around two years ago I went to Amazon and purchased the right to read the following titles by Jonathan Moeller:

  • ubuntu - the desktop beginner’s guide
  • ubuntu - the beginner’s guide
  • the linux command line beginner’s guide
    These books were based on 12.04 (an LTS) ubuntu with the unity desktop. They were very helpful. Now the last one is still relevant to ubuntu-mate, but there is a gap left by the first two when it comes to ubuntu-mate.
    Will a commercial author produce something similar for ubuntu-mate? I don’t think so, not at this time. So, where does the new linux user go to get going, for the first time ever in the tux world, when they’ve chosen ubuntu-mate?
    In around 2003 I tried linux for the first time - Suse - I bought the OS off the shelf. It came with handbooks you could use to drive in nails. The linux world was not yet ready for non-technical users and despite Suse being very polished (I did get the OS up and running, I just couldn’t connect a thing except for the HP inkjet printer I was using) the experiment did not last long. Back to windows.
    When I tried again over ten years later both the OS and the literature available were so much more user friendly.
    This is to say that yes, I believe a guide to ubuntu-mate for completely new linux users would be a very helpful thing. It could only facilitate the uptake of ubuntu-mate. “Changing to linux? Come to ubuntu-mate, this guide will show you how to get up and running and doing all those things you want to do”. That’s the book I would be happy to find as a new user.

How:
I believe in FOSS. So for me the book should be similar. I’m not sure how you copy-left books. Formats? Well that depends, and may be dependant upon how the collaborative tome would be created (LibreOffice with eLAIX plugin, Sigil {I’ve no experience of this}, other…) but I would hope for epub & pdf and maybe mobi. I also think that there should be a creation-chanel and publication-chanel or something similar - to what purpose - to allow multi-lingual creation of units as and when authors wish to contribute in their own language, separated from translation, separated from publication (ready to read & use). Publication via a link on this website - if authors agreed, perhaps for sale for a very modest fee via some one like O’Reily, with the profit going to the ubuntu-mate project.
Is this all too big and far fetched? That only depends upon where you want to go and how much energy you have available for getting there.
Depending on how it was organised I might be prepared to contribute effort myself.
@wimpy: and the whole team, it really is a great job so far. The website is as yet only in the English language as far as I can tell. I can’t offer translation into another language myself as my other languages aren’t quite good enough for that - but - if anyone reading this who is either of German or French mother tongue and is unsure of their English, and if the project wished it, I would be prepared to help with a website translation.
Really it all depends on who you’re trying to reach, and the milestones you set yourself (what, when).
xaltec did ask for ideas…

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#4

So, there is some effort already happening to address this. Kind of. Larry Bushy, from Going Linux podcast, has been writing new copy for the Ubuntu MATE website to better introduce what Ubuntu MATE and Linux are.

I’ve been working on Ubuntu MATE Welcome which incorporates all that content to help get new users orientated and also includes quick access to some tools and utilities to assist with post-install configuration.

I’m about to deploy a new version of the Ubuntu MATE website that includes the new content. I think this will really be version 1.0 and I will be opening up the site for translators so it can be multi lingual :slight_smile:

As was mentioned MATE 1.10 will include help, fully integrated, for Debian and Ubuntu after I worked out some licensing and legal issues with Debian.

But, an eBook for Ubuntu MATE would certainly complete the documentation effort and because MATE, and therefore Ubuntu MATE, don’t change radically would be fairly easy to maintain.

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#5

I hope that the website and “Ubuntu MATE Welcome” will support RTL (right to left) languages.

#6

@alpinejohn I belive is FOSS too, therefore i never really thought about a commercial publication. I was thinking that “Good” documentation, user guides can be a reward for the whole project.

What I woke up with this morning after reading @Wimpy post, is to have a compilation of "how to"s. I also listen to the Going Linux podcast and this is the information that needs to go into this book.

I’m on a drive to move as much people that i can to Linux/UbuntuMate and this is why I would love to see this take off.

BTW Gole docs has a translate feature. NO IDEA how accurate it is but i guess we can have some testers for that

#7

UM manual/guide as e-book

I was looking into this a little further and came across this:

https://leanpub.com

Of interest is also “Leanpub for Causes”

https://leanpub.com/causes

and the very high (90%) payment of royalties to authors.

The books are DRM-free, can be published as works-in-progress (e.g. for translations from the base language) etc. etc.

To the team - if the project decides to try to publish a guide as an e-book this tool and company might be an option to consider.

Just trying to help with the research spade work. :relaxed:

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#8

Ubuntu-Mate manual as an ebook | Part 2

So the aim might be a multi-authored, gratis Free Open Source manual as an ebook…

In that case I think this platform (FLOSS manuals) has much to offer:

It seems to me that this could be the tool to use in persuit of an Ubuntu-Mate manual.

  • I presume it only makes sense writing it once 16.04 LTS is out.
  • You might want to decide upon a structure (chapters & their scope).
  • Then set up the “skeleton-structure” in the different languages it has been decided to aim for.
  • Then try to establish milestones for a production plan.
  • Then recruit authors (who would like to work on which chapter/language).
  • Publish with links on the Ubuntu-Mate website.
  • Decide upon update strategy (contributions whenever by whoever, update-windows (with a new release following closure of the window), etc…

These suggestions are only meant to demonstrate one possible approach.

Any thoughts anyone…? :penguin:

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#9

Something along the lines of a collection of the how-to’s on this forum might be a good idea?. :smiley: (Just my tuppence worth! :smiley: ).

#10

been a noob I second wolfman’s suggestion. Speaking personally I need to know how to EFFECTIVELY fix problems not how to copy files around. My biggest peeve is one step forwards three steps back mainly caused by my googling “solutions” without knowing what is real and what is memorex. So my two CENTS worth :slight_smile: is that a noob COOKBOOK forum segment is an excellent idea. It should be in the form of a series of questions with the up to date answers as well as the historical ones. it would be nice to have a comments section with interesting things found by people which are somewhat relevant. As I say this is coming from a real noob so take it at face value. At least ten times in the last 3 weeks I reached for my Win 7 disks due to real frustrations caused by my own stupidity

#11

It’s interesting that people are having trouble with the interface; it’s the (improved) same desktop I fell in love with with Ubuntu 8.04, which took me all of one day to get acquainted with. I salute the new Welcome window and especially the ability to install most unincluded apps and remind even longtimers like me of cool apps I’d forgotten about.

That being said, a FOSS manual is a great idea to ease newbies into Linux in general, and introduce them to the command line, Python, Synaptic, Steam and all the other incredible features and apps our beloved OS has to offer.

In other words, +1. I’d like to help, if nothing else, with proofreading; there’s no such word as “orientated.” What you mean is “oriented.”:wink:

#12

I beg to differ!:

#13

Actually…
I am the proud owner of a copy of the SOD (Shorter Oxford Dictionary, two volumes, combined weight weight approx. 4-5 kg). This reference for the british use of English only recognises “orientate” as both a transitive and intransitive verb; in british English only “orientated” is recognised as a word.

However,
there are many “forks” (distros) of the English language in use around the world today.

So,
saying which “words” are in fact “words” first requires that the frame of reference be defined, i.e. which officialy recognised variant of the English language is being considered.

As the UM-website tries to be a home to all, irrespective of their command of the variant of the English language which they use, might I humbly suggest that we all show tollerance to one another?
If the meaning is unclear other users will usually ask for clarification (politely), if the meaning is clear - let it be. :smile:

I wish you all, a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

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#14

Wolfman kindly posted a link to a resource that I’d not yet come across:

LINK

The link he provided goes to the website of the “ubuntu-manual.org”

LINK
https://ubuntu-manual.org/

Question 1:
As UM is an official flavour of Ubuntu would it not make sense to use the structure of this Ubuntu (-Vanilla) manual as the skeleton for an UM manual?

Question 2:
Copyright considerations. In view of the license used, I do not believe that there are any problems with respect to copyright. Can anyone see any problems?

Copyright statement from the manual:
Copyright © 2010–2014 by The Ubuntu Manual Team. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, see Appendix A, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Section 3, subsections a-d of the license state:

  1. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:
    (a) to Reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more Collections, and to Reproduce the Work as incorporated in the Collections;
    (b) to create and Reproduce Adaptations provided that any such Adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes were made to the original Work. For example, a translation could be marked “The original work was translated from English to Spanish,” or a modification could indicate “The original work has been modified.”;
    © to Distribute and Publicly Perform the Work including as incorporated in Collections; and,
    (d) to Distribute and Publicly Perform Adaptations.

Question 3:
Under the terms of the license we could re-use elements (at least as a basis, prior to UM-specific editing) which are common to Ubuntu (-Vanilla) and UM?

Question 4:
Is there any way that we could “clone” / share their infrastructure? Would that be be beneficial? Would it be better to use a seperate infrastructure (see above posts) for the creation of a UM manual?

So, this could be a milestone on the path to a UM manual. Thoughts anyone?

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#15

Sounds like a good idea to use most of the book and throw in the parts needed to reflect the Ubuntu Mate DE!. :smiley:

#16

What about a github collection of markdown files on varied topics?

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#17

OK, so this is an old thread and I’m a bit late to the party. If anyone previously commenting here is still interested in an Ubuntu MATE manual, I wrote one. The book is entitled “Ubuntu MATE: Upgrading from Windows or OSX.” It’s perfect for helping someone to download and install Ubuntu MATE, to understand the key components of their new software before diving in, or as a reference as they learn to use the software.

A version of the full pdf book is available for free from the Going Linux website. (http://goinglinux.com/articles/UbuntuMATEBook_en.htm) Ebook versions will be available for purchase on August 1, with pre-orders available at a discount right now. (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731432) The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, so feel free to make copies and give it away if you wish.

I am planning a more comprehensive book as either the next edition of this one or as another book altogether. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I’m hoping to have some more detail about how to actually use the applications to accomplish common tasks. Since there is much to be done for the next book, feel free to provide feedback on this edition or just make suggestions on what you’d like to see in it.

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#18

Hallo

You may be late to the party… but you’ve done it. :clap: Thank you.

I think using smashwords is a very good choice. Were you able to prepare the manuscript for uploading to the smashwords site using LibreOffice, or did you have to use “MS-Word”?

#19

Used LibreOffice, saving in .doc format. Worked great once I figured out the requirements around formatting.

There were lots of landmines in the formatting for Smashwords, but that’s because of the way they process the files, not the fault of LO. For example, I had to manually number the step-by-step instructions because their system can’t handle auto-numbered lists created by MS Office and LibreOffice. Stuff like that.

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#20

Update for anyone still interested…
Now the book is also available at Amazon. That should make it a little more accessible to all.
The book ‘Ubuntu MATE: Upgrading from Windows or OSX‘
E-book version: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B074JGLB4H
Paperback version: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/152202994X

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