Aimed at new users, the Fedora Project's Fedora Desktop User Guide (FDUG) attempts to address some worthwhile questions: What does its audience want to do? What does the audience need to know to accomplish those tasks? What explanations and layout will help them absorb the information they need as easily and as quickly as possible? FDUG does a reasonable job of anticipating audience need, covering topics from logging in and basic desktop features to descriptions of setting up mail and managing photos and sharing directories. However, its presentation of information fails to answer the other questions implicit in technical writing, and suffers in both text and design from a lack of consistency.

Some sections of the FDUG meet the highest standards of technical writing. The "Managing Photos" section begins with a brief overview of using digital cameras with Fedora, then gives a succinct numbered list of steps for connecting a camera to a computer, avoiding the needless use of the word "mount" and carefully considering various options and describing how to organize photos. The "Sharing Your Desktop" section is even more succinct and tightly structured.

Unfortunately, these sections are the exception in FDUG, not the rule. The information in the "Office Tools" and "Playing Multimedia" sections are nothing more than lists of applications, with only the briefest descriptions of them.

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