Two newbie questions

[Eamonn Sullivan]

On 09/11/05, Jerome Gotangco <jgotangco at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > 1. On the admin guide that I see in the ubuntu directory of the
> > repository, is that published now on the Web anywhere? I didn't see it
> > at help.ubuntu.com, but maybe it's on the wiki somewhere? Emacs is
> > also telling me that it doesn't validate (one unrecognized <task>
> > tag), but that may just be that I don't have all the pieces for
> > docbook yet.
>
> The admin guide is still a work in progress for Dapper. The said guide
> was deferred halfway during Breezy development so the guide was
> dropped and only available in the svn.

Thanks. So are contributions welcome to this, or has someone carried
it away and has a mostly rewritten version that hasn't been committed
to the repository yet?

>
> > 2. Is there a really basic tutorial around? My sister is trying Ubuntu
> > and was looking for some formal tutorial, covering the user interface,
> > how to do basic tasks, etc., in a step-by-step way. I know a lot of
> > that is already in the Start Guide, but there are some people who
> > could benefit with a lesson-based tutorial approach. Is that planned?
>
> Have you checked out the GNOME User Guide? While its not updated, it
> has the basic GNOME use stuff.
>
> I did some slides in OOo2 Impress a while back for a mini
> talk/tutorial I did to a local University. It's a basic GNOME
> introdcution, how to navigate your way through the interface and basic
> office use scenarios. I can publish that this weekend and release it
> in a relevant license for other people to use as well.

I think that would be a good idea. For someone brand new to Linux,
there are plenty of tutorials, but they tend to focus on stuff the
average person doesn't care too much about (bash) or are about
distributions that are different enough from Ubuntu (Red Hat, Suse) to
cause confusion.

I remember when Windows 95 came out, people actually *used* the
computer-based training software that greeted you the first time you
started it up. My mother, for example. Moving to Gnome is as big a
jump as moving from Windows 3.1 to 95, though maybe a bit less so with
KDE.

The docs that have been completed so far are a bit more along the
lines of a Learning Ubuntu book by O'Reilly, for people who have
little fear of new technology.

-Eamonn