Ubuntu desktop documentation scope and location

[Heather Ellsworth]

Hey Doug,
>>
>> Ok I know it's not ideal, but given my limitation on getting a desktop
>> discourse space and the need for enterprise docs to be published asap, I
>> would like to have a help.ubuntu.com/desktop page that would have a
>> subpage for enterprise. That enterprise subpage would contain everything
>> in that AD whitepaper plus more tutorials and how-to guides and such.
>>
>> I was planning to write this all in markdown, to ease the transition to
>> discourse in the future (assuming it IS coming).
>>
>> This would be similar to help.u.c/rst but so much larger. The sheer
>> scope of the necessary enterprise docs means I need a place for it to go
>> now and grow.
>>
>> Gunnar, Doug, Daniele: What are your thoughts on this?
> 
> I still do not understand why AD (Active Directory) stuff isn't best suited
> to go on the existing Ubuntu Serverguide discourse pages. 

The AD stuff is a desktop topic and here's why:
* adsys [0] is a tool provided by Canonical that includes things like 
using GPOs in AD to change settings in a joined Ubuntu desktop system. 
The whitepaper includes material and examples summarized from the adsys 
github repo. The GPO support we've designed is around the Ubuntu 
*desktop* integration with AD.
* One method of integrating an Ubuntu system into an AD network is from 
the graphical installation. Note the other method is via sssd, and this 
is currently in the server guide as it pertains to headless (generally 
server) installations of Ubuntu being joined to AD.

> But I haven't
> seen the whitepaper, and don't know that I would be able to digest it if I did.

And I hesitate to share it publicly because it is currently behind a 
paywall. The details of the whitepaper aren't important. What is 
important about the whitepaper is that it's contents are really 2 things:
1. the same sssd stuff that is in the server guide (with more detail, 
and I can see an argument for adding all of that detail to the server 
guide),
2. and the adsys stuff [0] that is desktop oriented

There will likely be new features in the future targeting the Ubuntu 
desktop with AD or WSL even! And we need a place for this enterprise 
style Ubuntu desktop documentation to live and grow.

> 
> If it is ultimately intended to be on discourse, then my input would be to do
> it on discourse from the beginning.
> 

I agree but I am also aware that we should try to avoid introducing 
problems because we didn't think of them now, when scaling up to meet 
all of the Ubuntu desktop needs. I think this is what Daniele wants to 
avoid and I agree that it makes sense to put effort into seriously and 
thoughtfully designing a layout to meet as many needs as possible given 
the limitations of our toolset. I'll let him comment further (and sorry 
if I misrepresented your goal, please correct me if I did).

So for this reason.. without proper planning.. we don't have the go 
ahead to setup a discourse. There hasn't been proper planning, but I 
supposed that is what I'm trying to do here in the open.

It would be great to write documentation that is:
- in markdown
- stored in github
- lots of added new content stored locally, but also pulling from 
existing github sources of truth (it would be silly for me to 
copy/paste/maintain the adsys docs when they're so beautifully already 
in github)
- that can then be visible in the wiki (so html pages generated, then 
displayed on the wiki) or discourse (they already use [1] a commonmark 
[2] plugin called markdown-it [3])

So I'm thinking of creating https://github.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-docs for 
this purpose. Then I could start writing commonmark docs for the wiki, 
with the mindset of moving them over to discourse with minimal pain, 
once we have a desktop discourse.

The home in the wiki I have in mind these enterprise docs is 
help.ubuntu.com/enterprise.

Daniele, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this approach too, to 
make sure it aligns with your vision.

Thanks again for your time for the discussion. I think it's important to 
find the direction we can move in to meet the current needs while 
considering the future needs of Ubuntu desktop documentation :)

Cheers,
Heather

[0] https://github.com/ubuntu/adsys
[1] 
https://meta.discourse.org/t/developers-guide-to-markdown-extensions/66023
[2] https://help.apiary.io/faq/commonmark/
[3] https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it