community.linuxmint.com

Summary
1.Include common problems and workarounds in the User Guide.
2.Include the User Guide in the DVD.

Explanation and background

One of the problems I encountered in using Linux Mint was an absence of a clear notification of when it is safe to remove an external drive.I was confused by the terms eject,unmount and safely remove.Which should I select and why ? Is it done yet etc ?

Today I looked it up and it seems I am not the only one having this problem.It is a bug in Gnome and the bug report has been send.

See here for details

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=76004

From reading this,I understand
1.the fundamental problem is the computer cannot distinguish between a CD and a USB drive necessitating the inclusion of both eject and unmount options.
2.Safely remove may not be all that safe,it may lead to kernel panic(an action taken by operating system when it detects an internal fatal error from which it cannot recover - I think it means you have to do a hard reboot)
3.What to do ?
for an external disk use eject and for USB disks use unmount and wait for the icon to disappear.

Well,that's the background.

My idea-include these "problems" in the user guide under the heading Common Pitfalls and Workarounds.

The User Guide is key and my suggestion is to include it in the DVD maybe under Documents in user home so it can serve as a handy reference at any time.

I tell this on the basis of my experience with my relatives.They are not going to go to Linux Mint website and down the user manual or read pages and pages worth of forum posts.It would be easier to tell them over the phone "Click Home,yes now click
Documents-OK,now - you see the ebook called User Guide.Yes,well that has the answer to your problem.Ah Ok."

Maybe on the lines of Sidux (it had excellent documentation).