The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

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Should we make an Ultimate Guide To Mageia and Computers?

Yes
3
50%
No
3
50%
 
Total votes : 6

The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 23rd, '14, 22:43

Hi,

I had an idea that Mageia should ship with a big manual, for reference and learning stuff.

This manual will have loads of infomation on how linux works, how to become more advanced and even learn how the computer works and how linux interacts with it. Loads of infomation to allow an average joe to learn lots of advanced know how on Mageia and linux.

Here is some Q and A for anyone who wants to learn more

What is this book for?

This book is for the reference and look up on EVERYTHING linux and computers. This will allow someone who doesn't know anything to know everything. A book like this will get people knowing about their system and become an advanced user.

What does it include?

This will contain everything on using the system, how the system work, how it interacts with the computer, everything right up to advanced user guides and maybe even how to develop for it. A little reference on why something may not be working. Just a book to help anyone learn about their computer and how to use Mageia.

Why should we include it?

Including a ultimate handbook will alow more people to learn Mageia. Mageia will get more developers and users because they will be able to learn very easily. Mageia will get a very good reputation for documentation. So getting more developer means an even better Mageia, more high quality code, more features, less flaws or bugs, and more awesome!!!

Thanks for reading,

Please share your views, and if you like the idea, and have something that may make this happen or some extra thing that can go it to it, please comment and vote.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby Ken-Bergen » May 23rd, '14, 23:22

As Mageia doesn't physically ship but is a free download how would you deliver it "PDF"? and more importantly who's going to write it as the teams are stretched as it is?

Or are you volunteering?
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 24th, '14, 11:16

Hi,

No, it would not physically ship with a manual, but it would be on the wiki, organised in a way that allows people to learn much quicker and faster. So the wiki wouldn't become obsolete and navigating it and learning about it would be easier.

And I would try and help make this manual if it goes ahead, even though I am a new user and know very basic knowledge about computers. And the people who make it won't be the developers, but it would be a collabrative project by the user community, so everyone can make a contribution quicker and easier, making it even better.

Thanks,
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby doktor5000 » May 24th, '14, 15:32

First we should complete Mageia-specific documentation, before allocting contributors to such a generic project.
Besides, there are already plenty of such sources available, so why duplicate that work, where's the value?

Check e.g. The Linux Documentation Project: http://www.tldp.org/
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 24th, '14, 16:02

Hi,

If we make our own manual, everything included, everything would be in a centralised place, allowing for quick access of infomation. Yes, There may be some guides out there, but the time used for finding it could be used for learning stuff. Instead of trying to find it, put into a place where you know where it is (eg: the wiki). So it will be easy to access and easy to read.

It may be slightly generic, but it will contain everything to know about computers and linux. It may be vague, but the idea about it is that there is a reference guide that anyone can access, fast, easily and free, to learn anything that they need to know, wether it is about how to learn how to configure mageia or how to develop for mageia, or even for a university student, this guide will be there, so that anyone has the freedom and quick access to learn what they need to learn. And also if we contain everything about mageia and how computers work, loads of people will be able to learn what they nees to learn and fast.

So th value of making a ultimate guide, is that everything is centralised and organised, it will be in a place easy to find, it will be quick to access, and will help new users (like me) to gain advanced knowledge and know how of how linux works, how the computer work, how to be an advanced user, everything.

Thanks,
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby doktor5000 » May 24th, '14, 16:23

Feel free to write that, if you think it's useful.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 24th, '14, 17:17

Hi,

It may take lot of time to make though, and probably whenI finish it, Mageia 5 will probably be out. This is due to me not knowing much about computers (expect some hardware info), not knowing advanced knowledge of Mageia, and that I am 13 and a high school student. But if I get tonnes of help writing it, it will be done faster, more info will be included, it will be more accurate, and people will be able to contribute to it..

If you find this intriguing, and want to help, please comment on what might help the writing of this. I have not much knowledge and I am strapped for time. So contributions are always accepted. I WILL need help on this so the more people working on this, the better. And finally, if you think this should be a priority for the communtity, please try and make a page on the forum, dedicated to to keeping this small project running and creating guides every 9 months, so people can share their contributions, add ideas, submit text directly to the guide, and anything to help make the guide a short period after every release of mageia.

Thanks and please try to find places that will be useful and try to contribute to make the guide possible.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby doktor5000 » May 24th, '14, 17:37

You should probably get in touch with our documentation team: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Documentation_team

I still think it's not a good idea. If a team of 10-15 people struggles to manage and translate only the Mageia-specific documentation
and to find more contributors, how do you assume that you can take on such a project? Where do you expect to receive tons of help from?
And then the scope: Basically about computers, hardware, linux and everything else ...

If you want to help effectively, better make up a simple wiki page and collect links to generic linux documentation and free books of good quality.
Helps much more then simply duplicating existing documentation.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 24th, '14, 18:12

Hi,

I don't assume that I will be able to take on a project like creating an entire piece of documentation, in fact I think I will fail in my mission. But advanced users got their info from somewhere, all I want to do is have it in a centralised place where everyone can access it. If some developers, advanced user and sys admins work with The documentation people to create a massive manual on everything, the manual will contain more stuff. I just want to help the documentation people, so they can produce a big manual. So I am going to make a new post on the forum to try and get some sys admins, advanced users and developers to try and help the documentation team. I will do all I can to help make this manual possible. So IF I get loads of developers, sys admins, and advanced users to try and contribute to the documentation, this guide has a higher chance of being possible, but it is that very big IF. So the key to helping the documentation, is to try and get everyone from the community to contribute. And about computers and hardware, that will be done by people who know tonnes about hardware, so not to disrupt the making process.

Thanks,
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby doktor5000 » May 24th, '14, 18:31

Well, we're trying the whole time to get contributors to join sysadmin team, developers or documentation team to maintain the distribution ...
If it would be so simple as you try to make it sound, then we would already have more then enough contributors to work on such a project.
But in fact we struggle to maintain and support multiple versions of the distribution in parallel, and provide security updates, bugfixes and
improve the documentation.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » May 24th, '14, 18:58

Hi,

As true as that sound, I don't want to belive it (In a good way). I want Mageia to have a flourishing community full of people with tonnes of know how (This is one of the reasons why I want a Ultimate guide, so everyone has something they can refer to and use it to learn stuff about linux and computers). I want Mageia to be successful. Mageia will get more users if it gains more attention. So that means more seurity experts for security updates, more eyes on the source code to eliminated bugs, and more people for the documentation. So the awnser here is publicity and attention. When I go to school, I have to put up with people with no know how saying linux is bad and stuff like that. And their reasons are just pathetic, biased and their infomation is incorrect. Like one kid said linux is bad because it is free, linux gets it's money through grants and donations. So to get more attention, we need to revert this kind of publicity, and make linux have good publicity. I think linux isn't that popular because of biased people like them frightens people away from linux. So If it were reverted, people will get better info about which o/s is best for them.

Thanks,
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby papoteur » May 25th, '14, 10:31

Hello,
I am deputy of the documentation team.
I agree with you that the documentation is an important vector to promote the usage of inux and Mageia. The documentation has also to not only our tools, but also the upstream tools that we use in our distribution.
We have already something as a manual [1] which is the start of what you propose. This not complete, and some articles are light, but the documentation already exists.
We have also the wiki which grows every week with more accurate informations.
If you want to contribute to this work, you are welcome. We have a todo page for the wiki [2], you can choose a subject on which you will work on, say us you started, find the relevant informations and write it. Thus you will have an idea of the time needed for that and the facility to find the informations.
Se you soon.
Papoteur
[1] http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/4/en/content/index.html
[2] https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Wiki_TODO_page
Last edited by papoteur on May 26th, '14, 19:08, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby HAS » May 25th, '14, 21:52

As someone who has tried numerous Linux distro's and eventually found Mageia, I would submit that the more documentation there is, the more chance there is that the distro will become more successful. There are many people disatisfied with Microsoft offerings, or looking for change, they will look to read up something to get started. It will also help when new releases take place to document the differences.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby doktor5000 » May 25th, '14, 22:50

Feel free to help write documentation that you think is missing currently, links from documentation team provided some posts above.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby tuxpenguin8 » Jun 2nd, '14, 21:14

I will try and help make documentation, when I find places that will help, and have free time on it. If loads of people contribute, we will be able to make more documenataion quicker, and make it even as good as the FreeBSD Handbook. I've heard that the FreeBSD Handbook has extremely good documentation of FreeBSD.

Thanks,
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby xboxboy » Jul 28th, '14, 13:56

I may be way off here, but would the old Mandriva Power pack manuals make a good base that could be updated? That's assuming that they would be freely available now.
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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby jkerr82508 » Jul 28th, '14, 16:56

xboxboy wrote:I may be way off here, but would the old Mandriva Power pack manuals make a good base that could be updated? That's assuming that they would be freely available now.

They are not freely available - they are copyrighted. IIUC the copyright owners refused to waive the restrictions on reproducing the Mandriva "official" documentation. That's why Mageia volunteers have had to produce the Mageia documentation from scratch:
http://www.mageia.org/en/doc/

On the other hand, the Mandriva wiki, being a community project, was released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence. Much of the Mandriva wiki has been imported into the Mageia wiki.

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Re: The ULTIMATE Mageia User's Guide

Postby xboxboy » Jul 29th, '14, 01:33

They are not freely available - they are copyrighted. IIUC the copyright owners refused to waive the restrictions on reproducing the Mandriva "official" documentation. That's why Mageia volunteers have had to produce the Mageia documentation from scratch:


I'm not surprised TBH. Ok, that's done it. I'm joining the docs team.
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