Cheap Printed Official Ubuntu Linux Documentation

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."

The PDFs...

[bagofbeans]

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

Re:what I would like to see...

[dextromulous]

[...]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 "")

Re:won't open in evince!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was having the same problem. The ones mentioned above from http://help.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com] work just fine though.

Re:what I would like to see...

[chphilli]

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.

Re:what I would like to see...

[dextromulous]

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 :-)