Quality Control Suggestion

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 11:17:12AM +0100, Paul O'Malley wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> 
> >This is very interesting indeed; there are some inaccuracies in these stock
> >answers, though, which should be corrected.
> >
> >Is this the master copy of this data, or is there a separate copy used by
> >the IRC bot?  Who keeps them in sync, and how do they get updated?
> 
> JV got them from the bot, and just did a little more English in the web 
> page. I take it he will poll it now and again and ask it for new 
> answers. If you want to modify the bot work away or the wiki page let me 
> know and I will correct the other or tell me what you don't like etc.
> 
> Catch me on irc "ompaul" and I can add it to my whiteboard.
> 
> i.e. I'll gladly work on this.

Thanks for your offer.

> Q- How do I install FireFox 1.5 on Ubuntu 5.10?
> 
> A- You can use firefox 1.5 by following this wiki page [WWW]
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FirefoxNewVersion 

Has anyone talked with the backports team about getting this into
breezy-backports instead?  This would be a much more stable and robust
solution.

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-backporters

> Q- What is a Restricted Format?
> 
> A- Restricted Formats are applications that are Non-Free and found at [WWW]
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats 

It's important not to confuse non-free software with patent-encumbered
software.  There are many free software applications which are affected by
software patents (depending on the country where they are being used), and
this has nothing to do with their freeness.

Can we use a more precise description here?

> Q- How do I mount NTFS/Fat32?
> 
> A- To automatically mount your NTFS partition: [WWW]
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomaticallyMountMSWindowsPartitions 

Can't this be done more easily using the System->Administration->Disks tool?

> A- To install Mplayer please see [WWW]
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MplayerInstallHowto

This recommends writing a custom mplayer configuration file which seems
redundant.  The default settings in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf are;

vo=xv,sdl,x11
ao=alsa,oss,sdl,esd,arts

The only differences are frame-dropping and font selection, which surely are
a matter of preference?  I think this section should be removed entirely in
the name of simplicity.

> Q- How do I change/fix my screen resolution?
> 
> A- [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FixVideoResolutionHowto 

The md5sum finagling described here has not been necessary for some time
(since Hoary?).  dpkg-reconfigure will overwrite the existing configuration
file and automatically make a backup.

Rather than hand-editing the configuration file, it should be much easier to
run dpkg-reconfigure, select the "Advanced" option for monitor
configuration, and enter the sync ranges there.  This will allow the config
file to be managed by the packaging system during upgrades, so that changes
to font paths, etc. will take place automatically.  The same is true for the
DefaultDepth and "GDM uses a different resolution" advice: this can be
configured using dpkg-reconfigure.

> Q- How do I set up a Wireless internet connection?
> 
> A- [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WiFiHowto 

Why does this recommend that users run iwconfig, rather than going directly
into the GUI configurator?  Surely it's easier to avoid iwconfig altogether.

> Q- What is DMA?
> 
> A- Direct Memory Access/Addressing. A method of transferring data from one
> memory area to another without having to go through the central processing
> unit. It makes your hard disks run faster :-). DMA from the ubuntu wiki
> guide [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DMA 

This document should be more clear about the cases where this kind of
tweaking is necessary: in most configurations, DMA is enabled automatically,
especially on hard drives (and mostly on CD-ROMs as well).  If they find
that DMA is already enabled on their devices, they should do nothing (the
document instructs them to write an hdparm.conf file anyway).  It should
also warn the user that they should TEST their drive before making the
change permanent, otherwise they could have problems booting the system.

The troubleshooting section doesn't make sense to me.  It should never be
necessary to modify /etc/modules this way, and indeed, it won't have any
effect in most configurations because the drivers for the IDE controller are
loaded long before this file is processed.  Also, there will not be an
"ide-cd" line in /etc/modules anymore, which is used as a point of reference
in the document.  At any rate, any situations which could possibly be
corrected by such changes represent bugs, and they should be reported in
Malone instead.

I hope this helps.  I'd like to get some sort of process in place, in
concert with the Documentation Team, to vet these kinds of answers with the
development team before they're published to the user community as
authoritative, and review them for each release to ensure they stay up to
date.  Would you be willing to help with such an effort?

-- 
 - mdz