Help files are rarely helpful. I learned that long before I started using KDE, probabaly before I started using Linux. Again and again, I'd seem to find everything but what I needed. So now I don't even think about going to the help files unless I'm desperate.

Google not only has a much much larger database to draw on, but it features the added tool of the query. In other words, I don't just look up the information... I ask for it, and how I ask will influence the shape the information comes in. Asking, therefore, becomes a tool, and a skill.

I was not a person who had an easy time of it when i started Linux. I was a forner lit major with no technical background, who had barely grounded himself in windows, and I came to understand that not knowing anything worked against me in Google searches. I can remember one good example, I wanted to insdtall my nvidia driver and was trying to disable X, but I didn't know enough to think about it as disabling X... so I was looking for "console login", a query which brought me pages and pages of useless sludge. Not being able to find the answer in Google, with billions of websites, made me feel like a complete failure.

I think Linux help should be more about google help. If you don't want to explain everything to some hapless newbie, suggest a targeted google search. And when you're a newbie, people don't get annoyed with you if you ask for help with google. God bless the first person, whoever he was, who told me I could paste my error message in the google window! That was a happy day for me.

In terms of improving help files, they might contain search suggestions or even search links. They should address the question of what can't you find of on Google.

I don't use it because of the way "helpcenters" all over the computer-desktop-history used to be. I never open any of them again.

Maybe one day, if they get smarter and have more answers... yeah... could be possible. Right now they'd have to beat the forums and google.

I use it only as a reference for man pages and info on various commands;it's easier to scroll and read that the in-terminal version.

But for other kinds of documentation, I find it pretty lacking.I guess I'll have to contribute my own fair share of docs sometime soon.

I've actually found KHelpCenter extraordinarily helpful when I've had to use it. The thing is, I haven't had to use it often: most of the stuff I need, I manage to figure out myself.

When it came in use was when I couldn't figure it out myself, for example, setting up a Google Chat account in Kopete. I checked out KHelpCenter and had the account set up straight away.

Similarly, getting audio off CDs was aided by KHelpCenter in the Kioslave section - though that only helped me as an advanced user. I suspect lesser users wouldn't turn to KHelpCenter for that, though, and just search the K menu for CD (which would bring up K3B).

bcooksley wrote:Note that users can help improve the documentation by writing new documentation for applications, etc. and sending it to kde-doc-english@kde.org so the Documentation team can convert it to docbook and add it to SVN for the next release of KDE.

It would be nice if this was added to a menu in KHelpCenter. File --> Page --> Suggest/send changes or some such...