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 withls
, 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, typeinfo
by itself. To learn how to navigate the info system, typeinfo 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 ...
Get Linux Pocket Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.