Mactel Documentation Planning

[cyberdork33]

- the meta wiki that helps/introduces the user to ubuntu on mac
and helps him find the exact wiki he needs.
- a page for wiki guide lines and for wiki developers
- a discussion thread

This are already taking shape at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam
and it's sub-pages:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSuppor...unityHelpPages
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/PPA

We should concentrate on keeping these high-level items here. I think that the "intro to ubutnu on the mac" can go on the base page, and the current mactel-support team "about us" type stuff can go to a sub-page.

We can start the discussion thread type of items in the social group pages, and maybe start a irc channel or something in the future.

First we should think a about a name for the meta page.
A question is, if we should mention, that it's just
for Intel. I would not restrict it to Intel,
to have it more common. You never know what's
happening in the future. And maybe someday people like
to add a wiki for ubuntu on PPC.

I see what you are saying, but the PPC and Intel based platforms are completely different beasts. The only thing I have found in common is the HFS+ filesystem, and the Internal iSight on the last G5 iMacs. Besides that, the PPC communitu already has a large expanse of information out there. We could make a combined "Ubuntu on Mac" page (as you suggested) and just link to Intel and PPC sub areas that are maintained independently.

And we can continue this thread for a long time.

If we have agreed on a title for the meta wiki, we
can create it. I then like to write the table of
the different supported hardware platforms (So I get familiar with the
markup language )

I really think we should use what we have already. Feel free to update / edit / modify the existing pages.

With these three sites, which sketch our idea,
we can then try to reach other wiki writes
and invite them to join via private messages
our in forums.

sounds good

[kosumi68]

It's trodding along fine here, it seems

Just a few comments:

I think all pages except the MactelSupport and MactelSupport/PPA should go into the community pages. Also the CommunityHelpPages. We, as a team, own our support and PPA, but we do not own the information about how to install Ubuntu on a Mac - people must be able to edit those pages freely.

Regarding combining several models into one page, I believe that is almost what we have today, and it quickly becomes unclear. One can save keystrokes in other ways, by making sure subparts of the procedures that really are identical are kept on the same subpage.

Cheers!

[cyberdork33]

It's trodding along fine here, it seems

here too. I just thought that this type of stuff is just a little out-of-scope for this forum, but there really hasn't been a better place for it.

I think all pages except the MactelSupport and MactelSupport/PPA should go into the community pages. Also the CommunityHelpPages. We, as a team, own our support and PPA, but we do not own the information about how to install Ubuntu on a Mac - people must be able to edit those pages freely.

Agree. We cannot completely control the wiki. However, we can strategically manage the information on them. If someone adds information out-of-place, just move it to be inline with the guidelines without removing it and make a note for the edit.

beauman, since you seem eager to start something and have a plan for the page structure, I suggest that you create a template for the support pages to have as a guideline. That will help us understand what you suggest and allow us to easily create new pages from the template. I suggest it be here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/HWDocTemplate

Regarding combining several models into one page, I believe that is almost what we have today, and it quickly becomes unclear. One can save keystrokes in other ways, by making sure subparts of the procedures that really are identical are kept on the same subpage.

I think it is best to focus the wiki for a single hardware type so that the user doesn't have to discern what part applies, and what part doesn't. Unless the hardware is exactly the same... Like the Mac minis. I think the two models are exactly the same except maybe the processor options available. The aluminum iMacs probably fall into this category too.

[kosumi68]

Great, thanks for moving the MacBookPro pages over to the community pages! It makes it a lot easier to link between them. And renaming the page will also be easy when we've become concrete regarding the naming convention.

[cyberdork33]

Great, thanks for moving the MacBookPro pages over to the community pages! It makes it a lot easier to link between them. And renaming the page will also be easy when we've become concrete regarding the naming convention.

They were misplaced anyway. Support documentation is not supposed to be anywhere but in the community support pages. The wiki.ubuntu.com url is for team wikis.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Team Wiki!
This is THE definitive place for members of the Ubuntu community to discuss ideas and store team-related information.

Community Documentation
Welcome to the community documentation for Ubuntu - created by users just like you!

[beauman]

Hi!

This are already taking shape at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam

cyberdork33, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam
may become the main page for our task force. As you explained,
wiki.ubuntu.com is for teams and not focused on helping users.

When I am talking about a meta wiki about installing
and maintaining an ubuntu system on a Mac plattform,
I am talking about a wiki just for users.

It should hide the details behind the sceene.

I try to imagine how a Mac user would act and
think, when he decides to install Ubuntu.

He never cared about what the actual
hardware is he used. That's the Mac philosophy and
also, he never had to care, since everthing is preinstalled
and worked out-of-the-box for him.

Now things change for him a bit. Now he needs a wiki,
because he has to install an OS on his own. Maybe also,
because his webcam might not work without his doing. This
depends on his product, the hardware revision he has
and the version of ubuntu he likes to install and
bring up-to-date.

He would probably google for something like
"mac ubuntu" or maybe "MacBook ubuntu", if he has a MacBook.

One of the first hits might be our "meta wiki" maybe called
"Installing and mainting Ubuntu on a Mac". He will click it,
because it's exactly what he is looking for.
In the first moment he doesn't care who wrote it.
He won't google for "mactel ubuntu" and maybe the word "Mactel"
might confuse him. Mac user tend more to view their
hardware as a designer peace then a standard Intel laptop.
Otherwise it wouldn't be white

So, he reached our "meta wiki". He is just looking
for the information about how to install
ubuntu or how to fix the problem with the broken webcam.

Now we have to explain to him, that he needs to know the exact
hardware version he has, so we can direct him to the right place.
We explain him, that he either has to remember the production
date of his modell, or that he can look it up under OS X
or that he can execute a certain command under ubuntu.

Then he finds a comprehensive table which lists all models and
their respective hw-revisions by production date and model-ID
over the different Ubuntu versions we recommend for him.

He will find his exact model and click the link to the Ubuntu
version he likes best (either the actual or the LTS)
E voila, he made it, to navigate through the jungle of
wikis that exist at the moment.

This was originally my idea. You guys have extended this idea
a lot, and I really like it! It's cool that you have created
a group for us and that we agreed to act as a team. You are also
much more experienced to the wiki sites of ubuntu. That is
going to help us a lot. And you wrote a lot wikis yourself,
that's also very cool.

Now we should go step-by-step. The first question is, if
we only support Intel mac or just all Mac.
If you say, it's just Intel, then it would be ok for me.
You have the right of older here (because you did that
mac support much longer then me) Personally, I would prefer
to have it common. That leaves us more space for the future.
Of cause we should focus on Intel Macs. That's state of the art.
Somebody who likes to install Ubunutu on an 8 years old PPC,
might be a computer freak anyway and might not need a wiki at all.
But it's nice and open minded if we have some links at least.
If some day Mac starts using 128Bit processors not coming from Intel,
we just add a new table for this device class. I would place
it all on one site, so the overall hierarchy doesn't become to deep.
In the first step we can just link to a PPC site which we think
fits best. The way of naming wikis and organize them, will be
the same for all processor types.

If we have agreed on this point, we have to find a name
for the "user-interface" of our project.

One point we should think about, how we get it ranked top
at google.

We can then create it and see, how we arrange it. We also
have to discuss, what models are supported and what their
release date is.

A private note: I am flying to Vienna/Austria tomorrow
until monday, and I can only go online at Starbucks&Co.
So I might not be very active the next days, sorry.

Friendly regards,
beauman

[calebio]

I like this effort and would be happy to help out. My first comment is in regards to getting to this new set of pages. When I look for documentation on Ubuntu, I often start at www.ubuntu.com, click Community > Help and Information > Documentation and end up here.

Then, for my MacBook Pro (or other previous laptops), choosing Installation > Laptops I get to the Laptop Testing Team Apple Macintosh page, at which point i get lost and confused, as that is all very hardware-specific and old.

Can that page get linked to the new Mactel Support page, or subsumed by it?

Second note, can the MacBook Aluminum page be linked from the Mactel Support Page as a new item for 'MacBookPro5,1'? I see that one is help.ubuntu and the other wiki.ubuntu. Sounds like the latter is out of place:

They were misplaced anyway. Support documentation is not supposed to be anywhere but in the community support pages. The wiki.ubuntu.com url is for team wikis.

[cyberdork33]

This was originally my idea. You guys have extended this idea
a lot, and I really like it! It's cool that you have created
a group for us and that we agreed to act as a team. You are also
much more experienced to the wiki sites of ubuntu. That is
going to help us a lot. And you wrote a lot wikis yourself,
that's also very cool.

And I think you can use the page here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSuppor...unityHelpPages

to get started with that. It already has the information to identify your mac, and the links to the support pages for each hardware type. As the newer support pages are made those links can be modified to be more in line with the way you suggest.

Now we should go step-by-step. The first question is, if
we only support Intel mac or just all Mac.
If you say, it's just Intel, then it would be ok for me.
You have the right of older here (because you did that
mac support much longer then me) Personally, I would prefer
to have it common. That leaves us more space for the future.
Of cause we should focus on Intel Macs.

I understand your concern for future growth, but there is no sign of the basic architecture changing anytime soon, and it is good to specify that we are not referring to PowerPC based macs (they have their own problems and issues as it is, they don't need anymore confusion). If there is a change in the future, it will likely be a very different computer (again) and a new "team" or group of skilled individuals will need to pickup support of that hardware (maybe some of the same individuals that are here). Right now, let's just focus on the current state of things, and we can worry about expanding our scope when the need comes.

Somebody who likes to install Ubunutu on an 8 years old PPC,
might be a computer freak anyway and might not need a wiki at all.
But it's nice and open minded if we have some links at least.
If some day Mac starts using 128Bit processors not coming from Intel,
we just add a new table for this device class. I would place
it all on one site, so the overall hierarchy doesn't become to deep.
In the first step we can just link to a PPC site which we think
fits best. The way of naming wikis and organize them, will be
the same for all processor types.

Right now, we can link to some of the PPC pages just for information.

I like this effort and would be happy to help out. My first comment is in regards to getting to this new set of pages. When I look for documentation on Ubuntu, I often start at www.ubuntu.com, click Community > Help and Information > Documentation and end up here.

Then, for my MacBook Pro (or other previous laptops), choosing Installation > Laptops I get to the Laptop Testing Team Apple Macintosh page, at which point i get lost and confused, as that is all very hardware-specific and old.

Can that page get linked to the new Mactel Support page, or subsumed by it?

I think I will try to contact the Laptop Testing team to see what they say. As far as I know, that is really a separated thing from what we are doing (the community vs cannonical).

Second note, can the MacBook Aluminum page be linked from the Mactel Support Page as a new item for 'MacBookPro5,1'? I see that one is help.ubuntu and the other wiki.ubuntu. Sounds like the latter is out of place:

I will check this. You too can edit the wiki pages though... Just need a launchpad account.

[kosumi68]

Regarding target users, and I asked the question before whether Mac or Windows users are most likely to try Ubuntu, my guess is that the Windows users will outnumber the Mac users. By far. From this, I would draw the conclusion that the people reaching for the ubuntu help pages are people that have some knowledge, like the hardware, and want to try something new.

[beauman]

Ok.

Now we all agree, that our page is focused on Intel based Macs
and that we mention other platforms like PPC or virtual machines
somewhere out of focus.

It's cool, that MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages
is not listed under "multimedia apps"
anymore. That's one point of confusion less.

Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of

Quote:
Originally Posted by https://wiki.ubuntu.com/
Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Team Wiki!
This is THE definitive place for members of the Ubuntu community to discuss ideas and store team-related information.

Does it mean that this site contains information for a everybody,
but can only be edited be groups like us?
(then it would be placed ok and I'm sorry)

Or does it mean it's just for internal group work and should not
be seen by the user who seeks help (like I thought until today)

A last approach of me, getting the title a bit more transparent
for a newbee to mactel:

What do you think of:

"Ubuntu on Intel based Macs - MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages"?

( I promise not mentoin this subject again no matter what your answers are )

Thanks for beeing so patient with me.

So long,
beauman