Printed manuals?

[Andrew Jorgensen]

Matt (mdz) said I should bring this up here:

I think it would help if one could buy a printed manual.  Even if it's
just the Quick Start Guide.

One of my friends wanted to try Linux so rather than download it or
borrow a CD he went out and bought a book that came with a CD of
MEPIS.  This reminded me that I started out with SuSE partly because
it came with a decent manual.  We try very hard to make Ubuntu not
need a manual, but there are a lot of people out there who prefer to
have one anyway (if for nothing more than to see all the cool stuff
you can do with the software).  Even MacOSX at least has a little
booklet and O'Reilly is making money picking up[3] where Apple left
off.

The manual could come with a set of CDs.  That might be more effective
than a box with CDs and a manual since manuals that come in the box
are notorious for being an afterthought.

Has something like this already been discussed?  What are your thoughts.