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I used to use windows as a desktop OS but in my work I use redhat enterprise linux a lot. Now that i have switched to ubuntu as a desktop OS one of the things that is bugging me a lot is the documentation, it seems very small to me (more like a few how-to articles than a full documentation) especially that I am used to redhat documentation.

I understand there is a good community support but having a complete documentation is essential in my opinion. I am asking this question here in the hope that I have missed the link for a better documentation or source of information.

Hamdi Ghodbane
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  • If the Ubuntu documentation is official and all in one place how could it be kept up-to-date? If the Ubuntu documentation is not kept up-to-date it shouldn't be made to look overly official because that will give the false impression that it's up-to-date when it isn't up-to-date. – karel May 10 '18 at 06:09
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    What sort of documentation are you looking for.? Much of it is located in many places, including manual-project (https://ubuntu-manual.org/) & wiki (warning: some parts of the wiki are not up-to-date as community maintained) – guiverc May 10 '18 at 06:16
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    Although no documentation is perfect, RHEL maintains more detailed documentation than Ubuntu and you will notice a difference between the two. – Panther May 10 '18 at 06:16
  • If you look at the Ubuntu-manual project link I provided; you may notice latest manual is for 16.04 LTS. The project tried to gear up for 18.04 but with too few people from the community willing to help, the 18.04 gnome edition didn't get done. This is a common issue with community-based (unpaid) projects; the not-so-fun ones don't get done... – guiverc May 10 '18 at 06:23
  • @guiverc for example one issue i ran into is that i installed sublime text from a tar ball, the app works fine but it does not appear in the menu that let's me choose it as a default app to open a given type of files, this question has been asked here in the forum but no one gave a correct answer. – Hamdi Ghodbane May 10 '18 at 09:27
  • @dsstorefile1 for the problem i have explained in my comment above, how can i find the information i want from man and info pages? also man and info pages give specific information about a specific package and do not give a whole picture about a subject – Hamdi Ghodbane May 10 '18 at 09:30
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    by installing an app via tarball, the system packages do not know about it, so it won't be upgraded, can't be removed by the default apt system. To add it to the menus, you have to add it yourself (easier on some menu systems & DEsktops than others). Also when you release-upgrade to a later version, it may not run as it'll likely need recompiling (ie. make; make install to use the later libraries in the later system etc) – guiverc May 10 '18 at 09:32
  • man provides manual-reference page for the subject/command used as an option and is thus very specific. info is more general & gives information about a topic (providing its in the help database). apropos for for searching manual page names and descriptions for keywords when you don't know exactly what you want... – guiverc May 10 '18 at 09:35
  • @guiverc, thanks for the info, but I am already aware of why the issue happened when i installed via tarball, what I am looking for is a solution which I could not find any helpful topics about in the documentation :/ – Hamdi Ghodbane May 10 '18 at 10:09
  • See links here - https://askubuntu.com/a/1029849/66509 . And some things are independent and cross-distro (you can use ArchLinux wiki or your RedHat docs). Main components are the same - GCC, toolchain, GNOME, systemd. To your "why?" question - the finance may be an answer and number of real professional users (not newbies and one-time Windows-switchers) who can write the docs in high technical level. – N0rbert May 11 '18 at 10:07

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