Improving support

DUDE, if we all got together writing a manual, in the troubleshooting section, I have to write (1) Have you tried turning it off and on again. lol

I rather prefer open forum support than manual.

Something like this : Manjaro or this : Tutorials - Manjaro Linux Forum

It is much easier to find, you can follow it step by step and easy to edit ( for moderators) Scrolling manual with 100 and more pages is boring

Hello:
Regarding the help manual I agree that it should not be similar to those old manuals of the 1990s, over 1000 pages, in shades of gray.
It should be divided into three sections: basic, intermediate, advanced.
It should also have a lot of explanatory pictures (diagrams), easy to understand for newcomers. Since most of them come from Windows, it should obviously be made clear how the two operating systems are similar and how they differ.
Regards

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Perusing the Zorin OS Website, I saw this:

Documentation listed on the website. I should have done a better job looking.

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I could not see any "Documentation" listed when I visited that link you posted above. Have I overlooked something?

I wonder if our definitions differ on Documentation... But clicking the link leads to a series of links to the launchpad repos for various components.
For example:

Which leads to the packages:
https://launchpad.net/~zorinos/+archive/ubuntu/stable/+sourcepub/12259488/+listing-archive-extra

Where you can check changelog, comments and even grab the package if you want or need it. The package itself contains the detailed Docs, just as you can find in /usr/share/doc

Yep. I think that is the case. The OP referred to need of a "help section" for newbies. Subsequent posts then referred to the merits of Swarf's Unofficial Manual i.e. User Manual or suggested alternative forms of the same, not the package documentation you have indicated.

Ah, I see. I was responding directly to taha_mcp's post here:

I had originally replied, but as I found that link above today, I was providing further follow-up on it.

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Yeah thank you for the follow up. I'm baffled that I had not seen that yet.

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I believe, we should have it in the format of a Wiki, hosted on a domain with editing and history support. Something similar to how GitHub manages the wiki section would be fantastic. It'll be easy to search though. Finding relevant topic is going to be a breeze. And most importantly it will always be up to date. And also the whole document doesn't need to be re-written every time the 'manual' needs an update. A few new screenshots, and some minor edits to the text and Taadaa!!!
Who is up for it? We could get a team of collaborators together and work on it.

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We need help and of course approval from devs. But as I can see, no words from devs in last month.

But yes, I want help also

Thanks for all of your comments and constructive criticism! After reading through this thread, we agree that there could be a lot of value in a one-stop resource with a much wider range of help documentation and tutorials than what's currently on our Help page and Tutorials & Guides section of this forum. It would certainly help to more closely achieve our mission of making Zorin OS friendly to all users – beginners and veterans alike.

We've decided that we'll develop a sub-site hosting a dynamic and easily browsable & searchable database of guides.

We will import the guides we have already published in the above existing resources in one location.

As well, we plan to import Open Source-licensed guides from other locations such as the System76 support articles and Arch Linux Wiki that are relevant to Zorin OS. That way, there will be a large library of helpful content accessible to all Zorin OS users from day one.

We're also planning to maintain a GitHub repo where all of the guides will live in Markdown format. That way, anyone will be able to contribute their guides in a pull request. After review by our team, these guides will be added to the public sub-site for everyone to view and benefit from.

It will be a living and breathing resource of content that will evolve over time, with the goal of making it easier for newcomers to get familiar with Zorin OS, without needing to post questions on the forum or spend time searching the web.

We're planning to start work on this after the stable release of Zorin OS 16 this summer, so stay tuned to our Blog to know more about it as soon as it's ready.

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I don't know how much influence the Zorin OS team have on the Facebook Zorin Support group, but it really needs some administration staff to be online on Facebook. There can go days before anything gets approve in the group.

We don't run any Facebook groups, so this must be a community-run group which we don't have any control over.

Didn't know it existed either until Storm mentioned it. But if you don't run it, you may like to take a look as it "gives the appearance" of being vetted... including Contact Information that may be Spoofing you.

Edit: This may also show my appalling ignorance of Facebook- that may just be a normal Page for Zorin; It is the only Zorin OS page I could find searching FB, though.

@Aravisian The page you linked to is our actual Facebook Page, which we post news updates on.

What I believe Storm is referring to is this community-run Facebook Group, which functions more like a forum on Facebook: https://facebook.com/groups/437932476270124

I started to figure that out slowly... But better to check and be sure.
Thanks for clarifying (and linking).

Hi, good to see you dev. And that was a great news. I really like this distro :slight_smile: it is a unique one..can not wait for a new release :slight_smile:

Hello:
How nice of A. Zoryn to weigh in on our comments. Glad to hear that the problem regarding a newcomer manual is on the way to being resolved.
However, one thing that has been overlooked, forgive me for raising it again, is feedback. The developers need to keep in better contact with users regarding news regarding the project. From the official release about Zorin Os 15.3 to the last one, where the release of Zorin Os 16 beta is mentioned, a long time passed without the community getting any information about it. This is a very important aspect for a Gnu Linux distribution to grow in number of users.
Regards

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I think Forums are very difficult to manage - but that is just my noob observation. I came from LinuxMint and despite the very impressive volunteers and deep Knowledge Base - I found the "old BB" style very tiresome, time-consuming and too challenging.

I think HELP (Help - Zorin OS) is pretty good - and probablly more "cross-over" should be referenced/integrated into the Forum.

On the OTHER hand - the LinuxMint Online Documentation (which was a constantly updated PDF when I first began using Mint v18.1) is quite impressive and allows translation into 23 languages. I think the added AI (which I assume is similar to Zorin's NEW Forum) makes it the way to go forward.

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Looking forward to v16 when it is ready to be released. In the meantime I am enjoying v15.3