Linux on the Net

Get Started - The Linux Documentation Project

Starting out on Linux and looking for some clues? Check out The Linux Documentation Project for a huge reposiory of documentation. You can find there Guides - long and in-depth books available for download and also for online reading; HOWTOs are just what they are called, short subject-specific help on how to do something; FAQs are collections of questions usually asked in newsgroups etc.; man pages are there for you to add those pages to your system that are on the index but aren't installed; finally, Linux Gazette is the on-line LDP magazine. All these can be found at www.tldp.org

Reach out, get in touch

Like it or hate it but you can't ignore it. That's Linux and you want to get in touch with those out there that do Linux. Participate in very topic-specific Q&A with people from the world over in the comp.os.linux.* newsgroups. Better use Google Groups if you don't know what NNTP means.

If you want to make a lot of noise, or listen to a lot of it, Slashdot.org is the place to go. It's "News for nerds, stuff that matters", whatever you can make out of it. I go here only when I need a lot of opinion.

Linux.com for all things Linux

Daily news, Latest Software or Docs, Linux.com is the place to be for all things Linux. You also get to participate in discussions on just about every item appearing out there. I like it for the high signal-to-noise ratio in the discussions, focused and quick dissemination of news from a wide range of sources and high quality of looks and site-accessibility. The place I visit daily.

Visit the Cathedral, get enlightened

Free Software devotee or skeptic? A little knowledge from the source won't hurt. Free Software Foundation (FSF) is where it originates from. Get enlightened on the philosophy of Free Software and copyleft. Check out the high-quality software that makes Linux a strong operating environment and find out why we're all against proprietary software. Must visit.

Contribute

Want to contribute to the Free Software / Open Source Software movement? If you're a developer, technical writer, web designer or anything, there's a place for you at SourceForge and Savannah - the two major online project management portals for FS/OSS development. You'll be floored by the kind of project management facilities you find there. Pull up your bootstraps and get working!

Software

• Galeon: A fast and feature-rich GTK-based web-browser. It uses Gecko, the Mozilla rendering engine.
• Mozilla: A high-quality, standards compliant suite of Internet tools, including Mozilla web browser, Mozilla Mail client, XML DOM Inspector etc.
• Gnome: My favorite Desktop Environment.
• Sylpheed: A full-featured, light and fast GTK based POP/IMAP mail client.
• The GIMP: High-caliber graphics manipulation a-la Photoshop, coming straight from the GNU Stable.
• Emacs: A text editor that's everything and the kitchen sink! This is my favorite-est piece of Free Software.
• Ayttm: A Unified GTK Messaging Client that does Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, ICQ, Jabber (phew!, is that all?). Featuring unique concepts like single contacts with multiple accounts and color coding of protocols. A host of features that leave the official clients w-a-a-a-y behind in basic chatting. I like this client so much folks that I went on to write its User Manual! Also see this Express Computer Article.