Ubuntu 10.04 to Include Beginner's Manual

[pokerfan]

The Ubuntu Forums are helpful, if slightly chaotic. The wikis are better organized, but inconsistent and occasionally outdated. Now a team of users and contributors to the free Linux distribution have organized to create a beginner's manual for Ubuntu, to be included by default with the next release (Lucid Lynx) in April. The manual aims to include "comprehensive guides, how-tos and information on anything you need to know after first installing Ubuntu," and is, as you might imagine, being written in wiki form, so anyone can contribute. What newcomer topics and how-tos would you like to see covered in an Ubuntu manual?

http://lifehacker.com/5441494/ubuntu-1004-to-include-beginners-manual

A complete beginners manual for Ubuntu, featuring comprehensive guides, How Tos and information on anything you need to know after first installing Ubuntu.

Designed to be as user-friendly and easy to follow as possible, it should provide the first point of reference to any Ubuntu newcomer with lots of information in one easy to access PDF file. Plus, every six months there will be a new revision released to coincide with each new release of Ubuntu.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual

[struggle4progress]

1. That would be great

[pokerfan]

2. Before I switched, I read every Linux book I could get my hands on

which was certainly overkill, because it just wasn't that difficult. Moving from XP to Vista is a more jarring change, IMO. Anyway, this is the one I recommend to new users:



http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/index_main.html

[struggle4progress]

3. Thanks! I generally find any info I need on the innertubes in a few minutes. But the pdf is free

so I downloaded it in case I need some basic info without an innertube connection

[madokie]

4. Thanks for the link

I'm the kind that will change things as I see fit rather than live with it the way it is straight out of the box so it's always good to have a good reference to go to. I'm using mint 8 now and playing with Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 and can't wait until the final release on April 29. On this computer with 10.04 the boot time is less than 20 seconds and shut down is almost instantaneous. I'm loving it even though the alpha isn't full featured yet. In two more days I can update to alpha 3 and I'll even be more happy :-)

My biggest regret with a computer is waiting as long as I did to make the switch from micro$hitwad. The biggest hurdle was I use Autocad and everywhere I'd read every one was saying its impossible to run autocad in linux but when I finally got around to trying and googled how to I found it was rather simple to do. I've not had a windblows partition on my computer a good three maybe four months now and haven't looked back once. The more I learn Linux the more I like it too. Linux made com-playing fun again because when I get bored with everything else I can then screw with my OS til hell won't have it. I've crashed this computer more times than ole number 3 crashed his chevrolet.

Thank you linux, this is the most fun I've had fully clothed in a long long time :-)

[pokerfan]

5. I was dual boot for the longest time

because I had never gotten around to playing with WINE. Whenever I wanted to play online poker, I would reboot into Windows as I couldn't find any poker servers that supported Linux. When I started researching poker and wine, all I saw were problems so it was just easier to keep the windows partition. Anyways, one day, I decided to give it a try and to my surprise, it just worked. Within ten minutes, I was logged into my account (partygaming) and playing poker. That was the last need for Windows for me so with the next release I decided to opt for a reinstall rather than the upgrade and just made my home drive one big Linux partition. No Windows at all. Like you, Linux has made computing fun for me again. I have boot and shutdown times similar to yours. I never knew how long it would take to shutdown Windows. With Ubuntu, I hit shutdown and it's off before I'm out of the chair.

[Occulus]

6. The biggest problem with WINE is its hit-or-miss DirectX support.

Some games and apps "work", such as "Children of the Nile" (which, even so, has unreadable fonts under WINE) and Corel's Bryce; many, however, do not.

If the developers of Ubuntu et al were to be able to convince game developers to code for OpenGL as well as DirectX, Micro$oft Windows would probably quickly die as a gaming platform. Since gaming under Windows has been the biggest driver of video hardware development, robust support for OpenGL could continue the push for ever-faster video hardware while at the same time kill Micro$oft Window$ as a gaming platform.

I wish more devs were like id Software (sic). They code for linux as well as Window$. IMO, more should...