Under Construction
This page provides animated or audio/video tutorials on how to use Ubuntu Linux.

• Warbo: I think this should also include more of a teacher/student style approach which interacts with a user's actual system (like, "Go into the System menu" and it becomes highlighted, either on an image or in the real system. "ps ax" can be used to see whether a user has run the program that the tutorial wants, other than that I would not know)

Suggested Tutorials

Add your suggested tutorials to this list:

• Adding the Universe and Multiverse repositories
  • Warbo: I think this should be part of a broader description of APT and why downloading software from websites can be a bad idea. the legal implications should be made clear
• Warbo: Understanding the filesystem - This should reference /media, /home and the basic difference between /usr and /usr/local. Explain briefly that "bin" stores programs, "etc" stores configs and "lib" and "share" contain needed data. Emphasise that users stay inside $HOME and mention hidden files inside there
• Warbo: Understanding users and groups. Explain that there are loads of system users (audio, cdrom, etc), even if only one person uses the computer. Explain about permissions and (gk)sudo. Always use the term "super user" instead of root, and only mention root as, for instance, "running programs as a super user, sometimes called root, can be done with sudo". Users must not be explicitly told that root is a user, because in Ubuntu it really isn't and we don't want people going power-mad and destroying their system. Read/Write/Execute should be briefly explained (ie. "files copied from a CD will not be writable since CDs are read-only. You must change these permissions yourself in the file's properties window or with the 'chmod' command", "If you want to run a program or script but it says 'permission denied' it may not have execute permissions" and "to prevent other users from seeing inside a folder you need to turn off the execute permission for others and possibly group"). Also mention that everything, even X displays, have permissions

• Warbo: "Various ways to get the job done" - This should guide the user through the menus at first, then show how to drag menu entries to the panel and to the desktop. Then introduce custom launchers and that programs are in fact commands, which are in fact files. the deskbar may be described next, and once users feel happy typing "spreadsheet" to access OOo Calc then finally the command line can be introduced. It should only be referenced as an "occasional use" tool, but the reason for it's existence should be shown by running a complex, interconnected command (which relies on easy to follow syntax like "", &&, ;, etc and avoids bizzare "command-specific jargon" such as regular expressions) which does something impressive, yet mostly useless (as the tutorial should not modify the system or do anything important). Possibly show Beagle search when referencing the deskbar to show that the file manager is not the only way to access files.

• Warbo: An introduction to APT - Like mentioned above this should explain why a package manager exists, that Ubuntu uses Debian's package manager system, how different packages depend on each other and how packages are a) built specifically for the Ubuntu system (they work) b) automatically updatable with a simple UI and c) easy to remove completely. Show that this is better than randomly downloading software from websites (make a reference about avoiding trojans here) but also show that new repositories, as well as isolated package files, can be installed. Here there can be a mention on source repositories and binary repositories and what source code is. Universe should be mentioned, along with it's lack of official support, and then seperately multiverse can be mentioned along with it's lack of support and lack of Freedom (making reference to the source code explanation earlier) Make a passing remark that Debian repositories probably won't work on Ubuntu.

• Warbo: How to access the Internet - This should be a small, animation rather than video based guide which should be included on the Ubuntu install CD (animation a) keeps the file size down and b) can keep text seperate, allowing simple translations to take up hardly any space) This should start with ethernet networks, go on to dialup modems then WiFi. After these have been shown to be working, cross platform standards the guide should go on to USB ADSL modems, winmodems and ndiswrapper.

Authoring Screencasts for UbuntuVideoTutorials

See CreatingScreencasts for instructions.