Linux Pocket Guide

Getting Help

If you need more information than this book provides, there are several things you can do.

Run the man command

The man command displays an online manual page, or manpage, for a given program. For example, to get documentation on listing files with ls, run:

$ man ls

To search for manpages by keyword for a particular topic, use the -k option followed by the keyword:

$ man -k database

Run the info command

The info command is an extended, hypertext help system covering many Linux programs.

$ info ls

If no documentation is found on a given program, info displays the program’s manpage. For a listing of available documentation, type info by itself. To learn how to navigate the info system, type info info.

Use the --help option (if any)

Many Linux commands respond to the option --help by printing a short help message. Try:

$ ls --help

Examine the directory /usr/share/doc

This directory contains supporting documents for many programs, usually organized by program name and version. For example, files for the text editor Emacs, Version 21.3, are found in /usr/share/doc/emacs-21.3.

GNOME and KDE Help

For help with GNOME or KDE, choose the Help item in the main menu.

Fedora-specific web sites

The official site is http://fedora.redhat.com. An unofficial FAQ has sprung up at http://fedora.artoo.net. And of course there’s the web site for this book:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxpg/

Usenet newsgroups

Usenet has dozens of newsgroups on Linux topics, such as comp.os.linux.misc and comp.os.linux.questions ...