Table of Contents

Preface

Intended audience
Mailing the Authors
Our Distribution
Copyrights and Other Delusion
Acknowledgments
Standard Disclaimer

1. Some Dos and Donts

1.1 Do's
1.2 Important Donts

2. Getting Started

2.1 Using Menus

2.1.1 Using Menus in GNOME
2.1.2 Using Menus in KDE

2.2 Using the Run Program Dialog Box

2.2.1 Run Program Dialog Box in GNOME
2.2.2 Run Program Dialog Box in KDE

2.3 Using the Terminal Emulator

2.3.1 Terminal Emulator in GNOME
2.3.2 Terminal Emulator in KDE

2.4 Notes on Terminal Emulators

3. Understanding Linux Directories and Files

3.1 /: The root directory
3.2 The Directory Structure
3.3 /dev:The Directory to Devices
3.4 /proc: The Directory of Processes
3.5 More Information on Linux Directory

4. Files Managers

4.1 GMC

4.1.1 Starting GMC from Menu
4.1.2 Starting GMC from 'Run Program'
4.1.3 Starting GMC from Terminal Emulator
4.1.4 Starting GMC from Menu KDE
4.1.5 Starting GMC from 'Run Program' and terminal emulator in KDE

4.2 Konqueror

4.2.1 Starting Konqueror from Menu in GNOME
4.2.2 Starting Konqueror from 'Run Program' in GNOME
4.2.3 Starting Konqueror from a terminal emulator in GNOME
4.2.4 Starting Konqueror from Menu in KDE
4.2.5 Starting Konqueror from 'Run Program' in KDE
4.2.6 Starting Konqueror from terminal emulators in KDE

4.3 MC

4.3.1 Starting Midnight Commander

4.4 Notes on File Managers

5. Managing Files

5.1 Managing Files using GMC

5.1.1 Selecting files
5.1.2 Deleting files
5.1.3 Copying Files
5.1.4 Drag and Drop for Copying
5.1.5 Moving Files
5.1.6 Searching for Files

5.2 Managing Files using Konqueror

5.2.1 Selecting Files
5.2.2 Deleting Files
5.2.3 Copying Files
5.2.4 Moving Files
5.2.5 Searching Files

5.3 Managing Files using Midnight Commander

5.3.1 Using Mouse
5.3.2 Navigating
5.3.3 Using Menus
5.3.4 Selecting Files
5.3.5 Deleting Files
5.3.6 Copying Files
5.3.7 Moving Files
5.3.8 Searching Files

6. Connecting to the Internet

6.1 Hardware Requirements
6.2 Setting up kppp from KDE

6.2.1 Solving Permission Restrictions with kppp under RedHat

7. Chatting / Instant Messaging with Linux

7.1 History of chatting
7.2 talk
7.3 IRC or Internet Relay Chat

7.3.1 Basic concept of IRC
7.3.2 Software for IRC
7.3.3 Configuring Xchat

7.4 Instant Messaging

7.4.1 ICQ
7.4.2 Yahoo!
7.4.3 AIM

7.5 All-In-One IM Clients

7.5.1 Everybuddy
7.5.2 GAIM

8. Finding Help in GNU/Linux

8.1 Man Pages
8.2 Info Pages
8.3 More Documentation
8.4 Programs with no Documentation
8.5 Getting help From LUGs
8.6 Tips on info and man

9. Installing and Managing Software with RPM

9.1 What is RPM?
9.2 What is a Software Package?
9.3 Using RPM
9.4 Installing Packages
9.5 Updating Packages
9.6 Downgrading Packages
9.7 Uninstalling Packages
9.8 Querying packages

9.8.1 Listing all of the files installed by a package
9.8.2 Listing a description of an installed package
9.8.3 To find the package to which a file belongs
9.8.4 To list all the packages a package depends on

9.9 Resolving Dependency Problems
9.10 Using RPMFind and RPMBone
9.11 Circular Dependencies
9.12 Library Version Problems
9.13 Automatic Dependency Resolution Tools
9.14 Miscellaneous

9.14.1 RPM Version Incompatibilities
9.14.2 Midnight Commander
9.14.3 Learning More

10. Printing

10.1 Which Printer to Use
10.2 Connecting the Printer to the Computer
10.3 Installing Printer

10.3.1 Configuration Program

11. Multimedia Part 1 - Playing and Recording Music

11.1 The Basics
11.2 Playing Audio Cds
11.3 Playing MP3 Files
11.4 Using XMMS
11.5 Recording (or ripping) Tracks from Audio CDs
11.6 Converting .wav files to mp3
11.7 The Ogg-Vorbis Format
11.8 Converting .mp3 files into .wav format
11.9 To Normalize a group of .wav files
11.10 Recording (or burning) an Audio CD
11.11 Recording a Data CD (mp3 or ogg)
11.12 Some detailed information on related topics:

12. Multimedia Part 2 - Linux and Video

12.1 Introduction
12.2 File Formats and CODECs

12.2.1 File Formats
12.2.2 Codecs

12.3 Streaming Media
12.4 Some Common File Formats

12.4.1 mpg (or mpeg)
12.4.2 AVI (Audio Video Interleaved)
12.4.3 DivX (.avi)
12.4.4 Mov (Quicktime)
12.4.5 RealMedia Video (.rm)
12.4.6 Windows Media Video (.wmv)
12.4.7 ASF
12.4.8 Shockwave Flash (Flash, .swf)

12.5 Linux Media Players

12.5.1 KDE Media Player (noatun)
12.5.2 Xine
12.5.3 XMovie
12.5.4 XMMS
12.5.5 MPlayer
12.5.6 Mtv / mtvp
12.5.7 RealPlayer
12.5.8 Xanim
12.5.9 Macromedia Flash Player

12.6 Miscellaneous

12.6.1 Additional Resources

13. Linux in the Office

13.1 Word Processing

13.1.1 StarOffice Star Writer
13.1.2 OpenOffice Writer
13.1.3 AbiWord

13.2 Others Word Processors

13.2.1 Kword
13.2.2 Corel WordPerfect

13.3 Spreadsheets

13.3.1 Gnumeric
13.3.2 StarOffice/OpenOffice Calc
13.3.3 kspread

13.4 Other Office Applications

13.4.1 Address Books
13.4.2 Fax Apps
13.4.3 Email/PIM
13.4.4 Drawing/Graphics
13.4.5 Financial
13.4.6 Database
13.4.7 Presentation Apps.
13.4.8 Organizers
13.4.9 Calculators

13.5 PDF Files Viewer

13.5.1 XPdf
13.5.2 Adobe Acrobat Reader

13.6 Links

14. Gaming With Linux

14.1 Where to Get Them
14.2 Commercial Games
14.3 Hardware and Software Requirements
14.4 Setting up NVidia Based Graphics Cards
14.5 Playing Windows Games With Linux
14.6 Links

15. Creating Archives and Zipped Files

15.1 Creating Archives
15.2 Creating Compressed Archives
15.3 Extracting Files from Archives
15.4 Extracting Compressed Archives (Tarballs)
15.5 Viewing Archive Contents
15.6 Compressing Files with gzip
15.7 Zip and Unzip
15.8 More on Archives

16. The Post-Install Tune-up

16.1 Disclaimer
16.2 Before You Start
16.3 The Boot-Up
16.4 How To Make The Changes
16.5 Re-Claiming Hard Disk Space
16.6 Hard Disk Tuning
16.7 Filesystem

16.7.1 Alternative Filesystems

16.8 Kernel Recompilation
16.9 Miscellaneous Tips

17. Recovering from Crashed Programs

17.1 Terminating Misbehaving Programs

17.1.1 XKill
17.1.2 The ps and kill Commands
17.1.3 Stopping Command Line Programs

17.2 X Related Problems
17.3 Rebooting - The Last Resort

Index