Etienne Perot
Today marks the release of the french translation of Ubunchu's french translation of the third episode, "S.O.S. Forum". I have been part of the french translation team for the second and third episodes so far. It's a good and easy way to participate and contribute to the open-source movement, even if it's not code at all. I've also described part of the translation workflow on the Ubunchu-FR blog on which I'm a writer.
I do have some criticism regarding the manga and am opposed to some of its approaches but that doesn't prevent me from giving it a proper translation. Thus, do not see this as my view regarding ubuntu, but more as my will to contribute to the open-source awareness.
This being said, please enjoy the manga, a collaborative work of Hiroshi Seo (writer/artist), C-Quel/Martin Owens (english translation), and the french translators (ZedTuX, JonathanMM, and myself.)
You can get the PDF and the source files at Ubunchu-FR, on my deviantArt, or from this very server. To get the third episodes in other languages, or to download older episodes, please visit Ubunchu.net.
For episode 2: The introduction of the command line so early in a comic about Linux. Sure it's not something that should be ignored, it's a core part of many Linux users' computer usage, but people from other OSes do not ever want to use it. The intended message fo the second episode was probably "The command line isn't so bad and it's useful in some situations", but I also get this message "You're gonna have to use the command line in Linux", and that's probably not what people want to hear (albeit still being true for a large amount of use cases).
From a multi-episode standpoint: the setting/characters; very cliche if you ask me (high school students, Windows gamer fanatic, UNIX zealot, kind-of-clueless Mac user). Sure it works, but I'd have liked more originality :)
So that's what I don't like about the manga. But reading back my comment, I feel like it's also Linux's current state in user-friendliness that induced all of this, so perhaps I am not putting the blame where it should be. :o
You're right about the cliched-ness though (lol at 'kind-of-clueless Mac user'). It doesn't feel like the author is trying for anything more than simple fun with little facts and 'I see what you did thar's thrown in. Oh well, it's still pretty entertaining :)