Getting the Most from Fedora and Linux Documentation

Nearly all commercial Linux distributions include shrink-wrapped manuals and documentation covering installation and configuration. You will not find official documentation included on the CD-ROMs or DVD provided with this book. However, you can read or get copies of assorted manuals or topic discussions online at http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/. There you will find the Fedora Project's links to various documentation projects.

You can also turn to Red Hat's official manuals and guides, particularly for Red Hat Linux 9, for interim information about Red Hat tools (such as those listed in Table 1.1) at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/. Note that the names that began with redhat-config in Red Hat Linux 9 now begin with system-config in Fedora Core.

Documentation for Fedora (and many Linux software packages) is distributed and available in a variety of formats.

Some guides are available in Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be read using Adobe's Acrobat Reader for Linux or the xpdf client. Guides are also available as bundled HTML files for reading with a web browser such as links, KDE's Konqueror, GNOME's Epiphany, or Firefox. Along with these guides, Red Hat provides various tips, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and HOWTO documents.

You will find traditional Linux software package documentation, such as manual pages, under the /usr/share/man directory, with documentation for each installed software package under /usr/share/doc.

Linux manual pages are compressed text files containing succinct information about how to use a program. Each manual page generally provides a short summary of a command's use, a synopsis of command-line options, an explanation of the command's purpose, potential caveats or bugs, the name of the author, and a list of related configuration files and programs.

For example, you can learn how to read manual pages by using the man command to display its own manual page like so:

 $ man man 

After you press Enter, you see a page of text appear on the screen or in your window on the desktop. You can then scroll through the information using your keyboard's cursor keys, read, and then press the Q key to quit reading. More information about using the command line can be found in Chapter 5, "First Steps with Fedora."

Many of the software packages also include separate documents known as HOWTOs that contain information regarding specific subjects or software.

If the HOWTO documents are simple text files in compressed form (with filenames ending in .gz), you can easily read the document by using the zless command, which is a text pager that allows you to scroll back and forth through documents (use the less command to read plain-text files). You can start the command by using less, followed by the complete directory specification and name of the file, or pathname, like this:

 $ less /usr/share/doc/httpd-2.0.50/README 

To read a compressed version of this file, use the zless command in the same way:

 $ zless /usr/share/doc/attr-2.4.1/CHANGES.gz 

After you press Enter, you can scroll through the document using your cursor keys. Press the Q key to quit.

If the HOWTO document is in HTML format, you can simply read the information using a web browser, such as Firefox. Or if you're reading from a console, you can use the links or lynx text-only web browsers, like this:

 $ links /usr/share/doc/stunnel-4.0.5/stunnel.html 

The links browser offers drop-down menus, accessed by clicking at the top of the screen. You can also press the Q key to quit.

If the documentation is in PostScript format (with filenames ending in .ps), you can use the gv client to read or view the document like this:

 $ gv /usr/share/doc/iproute-2.4.7/ip-crefs.ps 

Finally, if you want to read a document in Portable Document Format (with a filename ending in .pdf), use the xpdf client like this:

 $ xpdf /usr/share/doc/xfig/xfig-howto.pdf 

NOTE

This book was developed and written using a complete install of all the software included with Fedora. You can use the CD-ROMs and DVD included with this book for your install or download your own copy, available as ISO9660 images (with filenames ending in .iso), and burn it onto 700MB CDRs or a DVD.

Along with the full distribution, you will get the complete source code to the Linux kernel and source for all software in the distribution more than 21 million lines of C and nearly 5 million lines of C++ code. Browse to http://fedora.redhat.com/download/ to get started.