Ubuntu documentation

The documentation covers the officially supported ways to use Ubuntu and is the authoritative source of information about them.

It is external to the wiki and can be found across various websites:

Where can I find all of the documentation?

A full reference table of Ubuntu documentation can be found at docs.ubuntu.com.

How is the documentation different from the wiki?

Documentation

Engineering teams at Canonical are primarily responsible for maintaining the official documentation, an effort that is usually driven by a dedicated technical author. Community contributions to the documentation are welcome but contributors require some technical knowledge of the tooling required. The documentation is focused on ensuring that people can use the software effectively. Teams are careful not to include documentation that is niche, difficult-to-maintain, or that places significant emphasis on third-party software. It's important to note that for the engineers and authors involved, the documentation is a professional responsibility that aligns closely with Ubuntu release cycles.

Wiki

The wiki is a community-led effort. It aims to offer a low barrier-to-entry for a wide range of contributors who want to publish interesting or useful information about Ubuntu. The wiki does not have any significant tooling requirements for new editors. The content itself doesn't have to be technical in nature. The range of content that can be included is broader in scope than a typical documentation set, ranging from technical guides to pages of historical interest. In the wiki, it's fine to make pages about tools or workflows that are not officially supported or that go in-depth about third-party or custom solutions. It's also OK to add pages about one specific Ubuntu platform or multiple Ubuntu platforms.

Summary

The wiki and the docs have overlapping but distinct roles.


	Docs	Wiki
Maintenance responsibility	Engineering team.	Ubuntu community.
Contribution model	Fork → branch → commit → pull request → merge	Edit → save
Checks	Continuous integration pipeline for spelling, linting, and broken links.	Spam filters. Linting and edit suggestions in editor. Spell check through browser.
Language	MyST-flavored markdown or ReStructured text, including custom roles and directives.	WYSIWYG or wikitext.
Inclusion criteria	Necessary to help Ubuntu users in supported use cases.	Potentially interesting or useful to the Ubuntu community.
Software used	Sphinx, Read the Docs, GitHub.	MediaWiki.

What if a page ends up in the wrong place?

This will happen and it will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

When it does happen, we should try to find a right home for the page and avoid duplication.

Migration of content from documentation to wiki or wiki to documentation will naturally occur over time.