Preface
Most GNU/Linux distributions come with a ton of applications, development
tools, and support for all sorts of fancy devices. But none of this is
very obvious when you boot into KDE or GNOME for the first time. The menu
contains a few apps but they are scattered about and don't have names that
reveal what they do. The vast majority of tools on the system aren't even
in the menus. This howto aims to help users to get acquainted with the
tools available and have them up and running on their own. Instead of giving
a list of programs you can run, this howto focus on tasks that you can
do and how to get them done in GNU/Linux. People use computers to do things,not
to run programs.
Intended audience
This howto is aimed at a complete newbie to GNU/Linux.
The aim is to help a new user to find out how to do stuff with their shiny,
new, just installed GNU/Linux operating system.Please note this document
does not cover installation of Linux onto any type of computer. If your
Linux distribution includes a paper manual you should consult the manual
for detailed installation instructions.You can also use the
Installation-HOWTO
to get some help. If you have friends who are at ease with GNU/Linux you
can ask them to help out with your installation problems.
So the rest of the HOW-TO assumes that you have a working GNU/Linux
installation and can boot into your KDE or GNOME desktop.
Mailing the Authors
If you find any mistakes, please mail
me.
Please note that the email address has been mangled to avoid spamming.
Before mailing change (at) to @ and (dot) to '.'.This
how-to needs active participation from the readers and I welcome suggestions,
praises and curses. Feel free to ask for help on a topic - just check that
your question isn't answered here first . If you don't understand the any
topic please tell us, so we can explain it better. General philosophy is:
if you need to ask for help, then something needs to be fixed so you (and
others) don't need to ask for help.
All emails (not spam) will be read. All flames will be sent to Timbuktu
(that is what I call my trash can).
Our Distribution
Anirban and Raj Shekhar are using Red Hat Linux. John
and Jason are using Mandrake. We have tried to keep things distribution
independent as possible.
Copyrights and Other Delusion
(C) 2002 Raj Shekhar, Anirban Biswas, John Murray,
Jason Barto. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies
of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice
identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation.
Acknowledgments
This book owes its existence to the collaboration made
possible by the Internet and the free software movement. Its four authors
have yet to meet face to face, but we have been able to work closely together.
We think this book is a testament to the benefits and future possibilities
of this kind of collaboration, the framework for which has been put in
place by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.
Standard Disclaimer
Of course, we disavow any potential liability for the
contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other
content of this document is entirely at your own risk.
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