Module Release August 2003: Linux Documentation on the Internet

“find and use Linux documentation [including] Linux documentation at sources such as the Linux Documentation Project (LDP), vendor and third-party websites, newsgroups, newsgroup archives, and mailing lists”

While many Linux newbies will understandably complain that they can't find useful documentation on a topic, the problem is rarely that there is too little documentation. On the contrary, there is often too much information held in too many, seemingly, unrelated places. The difficulty is more likely to be finding documentation that is appropriate to an individual user and their circumstances, within masses of interesting but not directly relevant material. Given this fact, it is often advisable to explore the smaller and better organised documentation on your own system, before heading out on to the net.

As with local documentation, you can potentially save a great deal of effort and red herring chasing, if your Internet searches are informed by an understanding of where particular types of information are likely to be found. For example, the Linux Documentation Project may be your first port of call for HOWTO documents about a particular service like printing or booting, whereas a vendor or application project web site is often more appropriate for finding out how to use a particular application.

Similarly, if you want to hook up with a community of people with whom to share help and ideas about a whole range of Linux-related issues, the sites and discussion lists maintained by local Linux users' groups (LUGs) may prove more helpful and friendly than Internet-wide fora like the comp.os.linux.* usenet groups. If your problem is narrow and application-specific then application-based mailing lists are the most appropriate places to go.

In most cases, you'll find better documentation by methodical searching than by the simple keyword matches which search engines produce. Moreover, you'll get more experienced users to help you if you can demonstrate that you have looked in all the right places and narrowed your problem down to one that they can easily answer.