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9.3. Online Documentation
The online Ubuntu documentation is available at https://help.ubuntu.com2. There are two different types of documentation available on this site, official and community.
The official documentation is the documentation that is included with your Ubuntu installation by default and is locally accessible from your Ubuntu desktop. You can also access this documentation on the Internet at the Web site mentioned above.
The following screenshot shows the home page of the Ubuntu documentation site:
Figure 9.3. Online Documentation
The documentation is classified according to the various Ubuntu releases, such as Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, 7.10 and
6.06 LTS.
To access the official documentation locally from your Ubuntu desktop, without connecting to the Internet, on the System menu, click Help and Support. You can also use the Help icon on the top panel of the desktop.
The information available in the official documentation will be enough to guide you through most topics and problems. However, if you are unable to find an answer to your queries here, you can look for answers in the second type of documentation available on this site. This is documentation created by the community, without following the stringent quality control process of the Ubuntu Documentation Team. Access this documentation via the tab labelled Community Docs. The community documentation is stored on a Wiki, which allows the documentation to be changed quickly. While the community documentation covers more topics and some sub- jects in greater depth than the official documentation, the lack of quality assurance control and especially main- tenance makes it a slightly less reliably alternative.
The community documentation is a large collection of community-contributed documents, primarily covering the following topics:
• Migrating from other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Red Hat
• Post-installation configuration for a variety of tasks such as
• Maintaining your computer
• Connecting and configuring hardware
The following screenshot displays the information available in the community documentation:
Figure 9.4. Community Documentation
The community documentation is also classified under various categories. You can select the desired category from the page index at the right of the page. You can also use the Search field in the top-right corner of the page to look for specific information within the community documentation. Be aware that Titles will restrict the search of your term to the pages titles only. If a search via titles does not produce any results, a full Text search may find the right page.
You can also find relevant information on the CommonQuestions page. Access the CommonQuestions page by clicking the Common Questions link on the community documentation page.
The following screenshot displays the CommonQuestions page on the Ubuntu Web site:
Figure 9.5. The CommonQuestions Page
Additional help is available to you in the form of Ubuntu screencasts. You can click the Ubuntu Screencasts link on the Community Documentation page to access a number of videos on using and installing Ubuntu. Each video is created with the aim of educating new users of Ubuntu. Each video is available in three sizes, large, medium and small, and two formats, OGG and Flash.
The following is an example of a screenshot from a video on installing applications:
Note:
Figure 9.6. The Screencasts Page
These screen casts are licensed under the Creative Commons Attributions-Share Alike 3.0 License. You are free to modify, share, sell or distribute these screencasts as long as the attribution to Ubuntu is intact.