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Cheap Printed Official Ubuntu Linux Documentation

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jun 05, 2006 09:30 AM
from the read-more-about-it dept.
Software Books Media Linux
A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."
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Cheap Printed Official Ubuntu Linux Documentation 45 Comments More /

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  • Ubuntu is no longer Linux for Human Beings, it's
    Linux for Old Fogies
    or
    Linux that Kills Trees.

    Seriously though, it's good that actual paper documents are still made availalbe. Until we have e-paper or HP stops raping consumers for 3.5mL of ink at $30 a pop, we need a company like Canonical to keep the printed docs tradition alive.

      • Re:New slogan (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you're trying to find someone to take it off your hands, posting as AC is not a good way to get people to contact you.
    • Nobody is forcing you to buy a $30 printer that needs $30 ink cartridges. Next time, spend a little more and buy a Kyocera. On my old FS-1800, a ~$60 cartridge is good for ~20,000 B/W pages. In real life, not just 'on paper'.

      • Nobody is forcing you to buy a $30 printer that needs $30 ink cartridges. Next time, spend a little more and buy a Kyocera. On my old FS-1800, a ~$60 cartridge is good for ~20,000 B/W pages. In real life, not just 'on paper'.

        Or be sensible and buy a Canon. Canon printers don't give a shit if you refill the carts.

        Personally, I bought a laser printer instead. I ended up paying $300 total, but that covered $200 for the [used, remanufactured] printer and another $100 with shipping to get the network ca

    • Aren't all those guides available in any Ubuntu install anyway? Apart from the server guide, anyhow, I don't really see the need for a printed copy of these docs.
    • Its neat that they did it.

      Let me relay my experiences.
      The company I work for has a s/w package with a reasonable amount of documentation,
      which we used to provide on the CD only, in online viewing form only - installed
      with the app.

      We were continually asked if we had printed documentation.

      So we created it. Guess what - no-one ordered it (and it was very cheap).
      So we dropped a printable version on the CD.
      Again - no-one printed it.

      Everyone wants to know you *can* provide printed documentation.
      No-one actually *w
    • So true! People who seek valuable documentation still have to spend much time searching the web and talk with the community. Actual ubuntu documentation is mostly immature or incomplete. Ubuntu realy evolve quite fast and I guess it is very hard for the community to keep up with up to date and coherent informations. Printed support is static by nature. That won't help it beying up to date. If you look at ubuntu server documentation you will see it is mostly pointless. If you need documentation to setup usab
      • If no other purpose, then a printed manual will be that piece of visceral evidence that Linux supporters need to convice PHBs that Linux is a real product with real support. Many traditional commercial products ship with poor and/or out-of-date printed documentation, but it seems to be a token of seriousness or evidence of having met the minimum bar to entry for RealBusinessTools (R)(TM).
        • The introduction of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support) would seem like a perfect time for a printed manual to be released. The two will go hand-in-hand to help PHBs accept this as a real product with real support.

          The issue of the manuals falling out-of-date is probably less relevant in a highly-controlled corporate environment - most large corps have Windows Update turned off on their desktops, I would imagine they would do the same with Ubuntu. Thus the manuals will stay relevant far longer.

          On a non

  • Fairly unlikely, for Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by keesh (202812) on Monday June 05 2006, @09:55AM (#15472313) Homepage
    If the Gentoo people can't even manage to keep the official branded CDs up to date reliably, I don't fancy their chances for documentation as well... If you want printed documentation, just find a local print shop and get them to do it for you.

  • The PDFs... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bagofbeans (567926) on Monday June 05 2006, @10:04AM (#15472373)
    ...are available without creating an account at http://help.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com].

  • what I would like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2006, @10:05AM (#15472380)
    ...is a gui to cli translator, then a simple list that shows where all the *(&^&**(ing files are located in the hierarchy. If you are non leet it is a bear to see what a command line command is compared to what the app is called in the gui menu, nor can you find all the files without already knowing where they are! Catch 22. I just went through this last night when my NTP date/time gui menu applet failed to work (I still don't know why, some update hosed a buncha stuff), I had to google to see what the damn thing is really called or how to do it command line! I found the rdate commands eventually and got my time sync back easily once I found them, but why isn't it right there as a menu option? One freaking sentence, just a single *word* in properties would be enough. Right click gui menu entry, get properties, right there it should say "see blah blah foo". That would eliminate 99% of the BS trying to figure stuff out. We aren't all unix guru admins here, a lot of people just need to use the computer. Ideally this info would be available under "properties" in the GUI menu entry, but it sure isn't in any distro I ever tried out. Does no good to say use the MAN pages when you can't see what the app is REALLY called in the first place to get to the appropriate MAN pages!
    • You don't say which GUI you're using, but under KDE, if you run kmenuedit, you can look up what command is being run from the menu, and do a "man" on that.

    • [...]then a simple list that shows where all the *(&^&**(ing files are located in the hierarchy.

      man hier

      If you are non leet it is a bear to see what a command line command is compared to what the app is called in the gui menu, nor can you find all the files without already knowing where they are! Catch 22. [...] Does no good to say use the MAN pages when you can't see what the app is REALLY called in the first place to get to the appropriate MAN pages!

      man -k [insert phrase here] (also try en

  • Ugly! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zsau (266209) <slashdot&thecartographers,net> on Monday June 05 2006, @10:34AM (#15472632) Homepage Journal
    The real question is, who would want to pay even a pittance for such poor typography? Some of the best-looking books have been produced using free software. Why can't they do the same?
  • ...but I doubt it.
    Just tried out the New 6.06 Ubuntu Dapper on a clean install. Although I've been configuring servers for years with Gentoo or RedHat, the Desktop Linux keeps stomping on me. Wireless card (3com 3CRSHPW196) seems to work but doesn't, DNS gets lost every few minutes on static LAN, could not figure out how to import Outlook Express messages and settings into Evolution and many other surprises along the way. It looks nice, but it's so much effort looking at message boards for hours to figure

  • won't open in evince! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Captain Rotundo (165816) on Monday June 05 2006, @10:35AM (#15472652) Homepage
    I am running Ubuntu Dapper, and the PDF file doesn't display correctly in the default PDF viewer. Isn't that a faux pas?
    • And there's the brilliant use of space wherein pages with a header and footer only (see page labeled v), or a single two-line paragraph describe the following pages (see page labeled #9). Surely this could be formatted better to not waste paper, should one want to print the document. Electronically, whatever, printed, big waste.

    • There's also not a single screenshot in the book. Newbies love screenshots. So do authors - they get to pad out page after page of their 500 page books with screenshots. There's a useful middle ground, and the Ubuntu documentation isn't it.

      I don't think this is the book's intentions. This looks more like a quick reference guide. Have you even tried installing Dapper Drake? Just so you know: it acts as a LiveCD at first, and places you on a desktop with 2 icons. One is listed examples and one says install. G

  • It's a silly attempt of making linux USER FRIENDLY :( Linux is friendly to Linux friendly users! Fruitless is what I call it. Atleast GNU Linux is counting for more everywhere.. :P

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