Getting Help
If you need more information than this book provides, there are several things you can do.
- Run the man command
The
mancommand displays an online manual page, or manpage, for a given program. For example, to get documentation on listing files withls, run:$ man ls
To search for manpages by keyword for a particular topic, use the
-koption followed by the keyword:$ man -k database
- Run the info command
The
infocommand is an extended, hypertext help system covering many Linux programs.$ info ls
If no documentation is found on a given program,
infodisplays the program’s manpage. For a listing of available documentation, typeinfoby itself. To learn how to navigate the info system, typeinfo info.- Use the --help option (if any)
Many Linux commands respond to the option
--helpby 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 ...