adding X to server (+ documentation)

[Marcus Wagenaar]

JoE wrote:
> This is really only partially appropriate to us, but a friend of mine
> recently tried to add X to his server install of ubuntu.  In the end,
> after much frustration, he added ubuntu-desktop because it was all
> that would work.

I can confirm  this. My friend had exactly the same problem while
setting up his server with ubuntu. And he is not a linux-newbie, he has
multiple machines running lfs, gentoo etcetera.

> Also, he was complaining about the uselessness of the documentation.
> We've been doing a lot of that lately as well.  Those of you who are
> also on the server team, bear in mind that any improvements we make to
> our documentation need to be echoed in the text based server
> documentation to be truly useful.

I think this isn't realistic. It's a nice goal to have the text-based
documentation up to date with the newest docs, wiki entries and so
forth, but I think it shouldn't be first priority. It's quite reasonable
to expect someone installing an ubuntu-server to have access to another
machine with "normal" (ie. graphical) access to the internet. In my
opinion the focus should be on getting the documentation as complete as
possible. The text-based docs obviously shouldn't be neglected
altogether but I reckon administrators would favor complete "graphical"
documentation above incomplete text-based documentation.

Regards,

Marcus Wagenaar

--
email:    mwagena at cs.vu.nl
homepage: www.cs.vu.nl/~mwagena