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Cheap Printed Official Ubuntu Linux Documentation

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the read-more-about-it dept.

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

11 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Fairly unlikely, for Gentoo by keesh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If the Gentoo people can't even manage to keep the official branded CDs up to date reliably, I don't fancy their chances for documentation as well... If you want printed documentation, just find a local print shop and get them to do it for you.

  2. The PDFs... by bagofbeans · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...are available without creating an account at http://help.ubuntu.com/.

  3. what I would like to see... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is a gui to cli translator, then a simple list that shows where all the *(&^&**(ing files are located in the hierarchy. If you are non leet it is a bear to see what a command line command is compared to what the app is called in the gui menu, nor can you find all the files without already knowing where they are! Catch 22. I just went through this last night when my NTP date/time gui menu applet failed to work (I still don't know why, some update hosed a buncha stuff), I had to google to see what the damn thing is really called or how to do it command line! I found the rdate commands eventually and got my time sync back easily once I found them, but why isn't it right there as a menu option? One freaking sentence, just a single *word* in properties would be enough. Right click gui menu entry, get properties, right there it should say "see blah blah foo". That would eliminate 99% of the BS trying to figure stuff out. We aren't all unix guru admins here, a lot of people just need to use the computer. Ideally this info would be available under "properties" in the GUI menu entry, but it sure isn't in any distro I ever tried out. Does no good to say use the MAN pages when you can't see what the app is REALLY called in the first place to get to the appropriate MAN pages!

    1. Re:what I would like to see... by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't say which GUI you're using, but under KDE, if you run kmenuedit, you can look up what command is being run from the menu, and do a "man" on that.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:what I would like to see... by dextromulous · · Score: 2, Informative
      [...]then a simple list that shows where all the *(&^&**(ing files are located in the hierarchy.
      man hier
      If you are non leet it is a bear to see what a command line command is compared to what the app is called in the gui menu, nor can you find all the files without already knowing where they are! Catch 22. [...] Does no good to say use the MAN pages when you can't see what the app is REALLY called in the first place to get to the appropriate MAN pages!
      man -k [insert phrase here] (also try enclosing phrase in "")
      --
      There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
    3. Re:what I would like to see... by chphilli · · Score: 4, Informative

      Also, apropos.

      When I first found out about this tool, I thought it was going to be useless compared to locate, but the fact that you can get the title of the man-page entries, plus a short description, is incredibly useful when you don't know exactly what you are looking for.

      --
      Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
    4. Re:what I would like to see... by dextromulous · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know about you, but the man page for man(1) on my distro says that apropos and man -k are equivalent... whatis OTOH, is different, and is equivalent to man -f :-)

      oddly enough, the same script is used for both whatis and apropos (on gentoo at least) it just uses different parameters for grep depending on how it was called... The More You Know :-)

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
  4. Re:Page 1 by BobNET · · Score: 2, Funny
    Page 1: "RTFM"
    The END.

    Isn't that the OpenBSD User's Guide?

  5. Ugly! by zsau · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The real question is, who would want to pay even a pittance for such poor typography? Some of the best-looking books have been produced using free software. Why can't they do the same?

    --
    Look out!
  6. won't open in evince! by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am running Ubuntu Dapper, and the PDF file doesn't display correctly in the default PDF viewer. Isn't that a faux pas?

  7. Re:Page 1 by thc69 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I guess I should have just made the FP myself. My karma would have been damaged less...

    --
    Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.