Hi, I'm writing a Debian guide and I am having a few problems structuring the guide. What would be a good way to write a Debian guide?

1. What aspects of Debian to include.
2. How detailed should the guide be.
3. Inclusion of screenshots.
4. Explanation of driver installations?
5. How to organize the pages (one single page covering it all or multiple pages.)

Currently I'm writing and I have to decide how best it would serve the Linux community. I would be glad for some feedback on the areas I have mentioned.

Thanks

1) Install from a cd and a net install. How to write a sources.list. Where to get the cd images.
2) very simple language, since only beginners will use it. Dont go into detail on hacks etc.
3) I've never really seen many good guides with screen shots and descriptions, only one or the other. Maybe you could make it work
4) what sort of drivers? I'd include ATI and Nvidia for sure, since they both work first time around and within 2mins (unlike a few years ago)
5) I think a good idea maybe be to have one page for the text instructions, and make another with screenshots and shorter descriptions.


I'm also thinking of doing this, since I've slowly built up a library of handwritten notes on all sorts of stuff. Configuring apache, useful apps etc.


Good luck with your work.

Thanks for the encouragement.

The real hard part is getting screenshots of installation screens. I wonder how I can capture screens of the installation screen.

The other aspects can be worked on. So far I've done a visual guide to setup the sources.list.

You're right. It's got to be a newbie guide and that's where the difficulty comes in. How simple it should be...

I didn't write any kind of guide, but my Debian tips page and Newbie page are all of the links I found helpful. I add new links as I come across them.
Just today I found that Rox-filer can create a background in Icewm, and it uses much less ram than either Nautilus or Konqueror.

"Debian GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide" is a decent beginner guide.
http://survivor.sarovar.org/

The documentation at debian.org like the "Debian Tutorial" and the "User's Guide" would be good places to start.

i think you should make it as easy as possible because the problem is that people fear debian as they think that its hard but actually its very easy to use

so if you make it easy to read and understand then people will see that its not that hard and may be try it out

heema, it's actually very difficult to write a guide for newbies. You cannot assume too much prior knowledge, but where to have that limit is the real challenge... at what point do I start?

I'm taking up that challenge. Let's see how far I go with this...

I'm no expert with Debian, but I did just finish writing a manual at work for our software. The advice I got, and found useful, was to look at guides and howtos on just about anything and find out what works for you and explains how to use the software well, then try to model your guide similarily.

As far as scope of the guide goes, I'd say no topic is minor enough to ignore, unless you are writing for a more advanced crowd.

Just my two cents.