Ubuntu desktop documentation scope and location

[Heather Ellsworth]

Hello Folks,

I'd like to contribute to these lovely docs, so first let me say an 
overdue hello! The work done to maintain ubuntu-help has been so 
valuable and I'm happy to work with you all :)

I work on the Ubuntu desktop team and have had the chance to recently 
dive into the documentation of the integration of Ubuntu and Active 
Directory. I worked with the Enterprise Desktop team to update a 
whitepaper (that is over 60 pages), on everything related to setting up 
and managing Ubuntu servers from an Active Directory instance. Now we'd 
like to copy/pasta that information (with formatting) to some public 
space. This naturally led to an existential crisis about documentation 
and goals and such :)

I have been involved in some discussions on the desktop docs and have 
some thoughts on it's general goals, and how we can best use the tools 
to align with those goals. I also really wanted to take the Ubuntu 
Community's temperature on these subjects, so please feel free to 
provide feedback :)

## Audience
There are 3 types of audiences that I believe Ubuntu desktop 
documentation should aim to enable:
   1. community user docs: I believe this is help.ubuntu.com. This is 
the foundational knowledge all Ubuntu users need.
   2. developers docs: for those developing on/for ubuntu. This would 
include guides on debian packaging, deb package process/maint, launchpad 
bug fixing, container setup, etc. There is not much overlap between 
developer docs and community user docs. I see the developer docs each 
pointing to the more foundational knowledge found on the user docs where 
needed. There is no existing page for this.
   3. corporate users/IT/Enterprise support for Ubuntu desktop. These 
folks want guides on provisioning lots of machines, Active Directory 
integration, rolling out updates at scale. These docs will rely heavily 
on the foundational knowledge in the community user docs. These docs 
will likely overlap with field engineering docs as well, need to work 
out where the ownership lies. There is no existing page for this 
explicitly, but the Ubuntu Server Guide is heavily relied on.

## Tooling
I've been told that we are going to use discourse as our documentation 
infrastructure. I don't have a deadline, but it seems like any major 
changes are strongly encouraged to be made in the discourse direction. 
This seems to be a fact, regardless of many opposing opinions. My point 
in bringing it up here is to not launch any sort of flame war, but to 
assume this and just move on.

So this leads to some big questions:
1. Does there happen to be an existing plan to migrate help.ubuntu.com 
to a discourse site? As far as I can tell, there is no 
https://desktop.io/docs (it would match the discourse naming convention 
Canonical is using for many other products found at docs.ubuntu.com).
2. When I still need to make a page NOW! (to have it for the release), 
because we don't have a permanent solution (discourse) setup, I'm told 
to put it on the wiki. But important product pages [0] should not look 
like they are from 2004. So is there another place?

## Content
help.ubuntu.com is great, but it would be nice if the screenshots were 
based in Ubuntu rather than GNOME OS. I don't see an easy fix that isn't 
extremely manual and a huge maintenance burden. Has this been discussed 
before and thoughts on a fix?

I like the idea of having user and developer documentation separate, 
similar to https://developer.apple.com/ and 
https://developer.microsoft.com/ and https://developers.google.com/

I'd like to see perhaps one beautiful page (ubuntu.com) and easily find 
the documentation. Maybe that's a Docs tab with 3 options under it: 
user, developer, enterprise. Each one of these should take the reader to 
the right place, all backed in the same discourse so we have an easier 
time cross referencing pages.

I have a whole google doc filled with suggested tutorials and how-to 
guides for each of the 3 audiences, if you'd like to see them. Just 
trying to not go too far in the weeds :)

## Communication
Do you all have frequent meetings? If so, what are the details? If not, 
is anyone willing to get together virtually on a fortnightly basis or 
something similar?

## Current needs
The thing that launched me on this quest to begin with.. I need to make 
a public page of a lot of content - over 60 pages, currently in a google 
doc - that details Ubuntu integration with Active Directory. I could 
open a PR to add this to somewhere on help.ubuntu.com but, as I stated, 
I don't believe this is the right place. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I really appreciate everyone's time and thoughts.

Cheers,
Heather


[0] Me personally, I'm concerned with the documentation of the Ubuntu 
desktop team products: the GNOME-based Ubuntu itself and its apps, WSL, 
Active Directory integration, Flutter things like the new installer and 
software center. However, the statement stands. No important product 
page should look old.