6.2 Objective 2: Find Linux
Documentation on the Internet
No doubt you've
heard media reports regarding the genesis of Linux from a
bunch of hackers, the profits of the major distributions,
high-profile corporate relationships with Linux, and Linux as
a Wall Street darling. It is well known that coders around the
world are contributing to the Linux code base. Rarely
mentioned, however, are the many dedicated writers working in
the public domain to make sure that Linux is as well
understood as it is stable. Most of the people who contribute
to the LDP do so on their own time, providing information
learned from their own experiences. In most cases, the people
who write for the LDP provide their names and email addresses
so you can contact them with questions that remain unanswered.
These writers are partially responsible for the widespread
growth of Linux, because they make it understandable to
individuals through documentation efforts not usually seen
with commercial software.
6.2.1 The Linux Documentation
Project
Most of the documentation in /usr/doc
and elsewhere on a Linux system is part of an organized
approach to system documentation. The Linux Documentation Project, or LDP, is a loosely knit team of
writers, proofreaders, and editors who work together to create
the definitive set of documentation for Linux. The main web
site can be found at http://www.linuxdoc.org/ and at many mirror
sites throughout the world.
The LDP contains a collection of freely
contributed documents. Like Linux, all of the LDP's content
may be freely distributed, copied, and even published for a
fee without royalties to authors or to the LDP. Documents that
are contributed to the LDP can be licensed a variety of ways.
The LDP offers its own licensing terms, but authors aren't
tied to using it. Some have opted to write their own license,
while others have published their work under the GNU Public
License (GPL). The Free Software Foundation has recently
produced the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which may
become a standard for many of the LDP content.
The scope of the LDP is broad, ranging from
online documents such as manpages to complete books in the
form of reference guides. Some of the documents have
software-style version numbers to assist with keeping
up-to-date. Some of the more commonly used LDP reference
guides include:
-
Installation and Getting Started Guide
-
The Linux Users' Guide
-
The Linux System Administrators' Guide
-
The Linux Network Administrators' Guide
-
The Linux Programmer's Guide
-
The Linux Kernel
-
The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide
-
The Linux Kernel Module Programming
Guide
Some of these LDP guides have been published
in traditional book form, with mixed success. Any publisher
can produce its own edition of the text, but since content
must be identical, competing publishers can find themselves in
a discounting exercise. This, coupled with frequent and
unadvertised modifications, makes printed versions of LDP
documents a speculative business venture at best.
6.2.2 Usenet Newsgroups
Usenet newsgroups can be thought of as a
worldwide bulletin board service, with topics beyond your
imagination (some of which probably belong beyond your
imagination!). Unlike the older traditional proprietary
bulletin board services you may remember from the early online
days, Usenet is a distributed system, where messages are
posted to a user's local news
server in a newsgroup.
The message is then copied among thousands of news servers
worldwide that also serve that same newsgroup. Some newsgroups
are moderated by a responsible party to keep the content from
getting out of hand. Many are not monitored at all and are a
free-for-all of opinions, ideas, and occasional off-topic
color.
You can access Usenet content through your
Internet Service Provider's news server, if one is offered, or
you may use a web-based news reading service, such as Google
Groups (http://groups.google.com/). Regardless of
the method you choose, the content is the same. Messages
posted to newsgroups are stored on your news server and not on
a remote origin server. This fact sometimes leads ISPs and
corporations to abandon news services altogether, due to the
sheer volume of information that gets relayed on a daily
basis.
If you use a Usenet news server, you will
read messages with a news
reader application. Many mail
programs and web browsers contain news readers that
communicate with Usenet news servers. Standalone GUI- and
text-based news readers are also available. Since Usenet
messages are plain text, they can be viewed by any paging or
editing program. However, many news readers optionally group
messages by thread, which makes following a particular
discussion easy. Another benefit of using a news reader is
that they manage read and unread message status, marking
messages for later review, and so on.
A search for Linux in the growing list of newsgroups yields hundreds of individual
groups, far too many for any single individual to keep up
with. There are groups specific to development, to
distributions, and to hardware platforms. There are Linux
advocacy groups (both pro and con) and security groups.
Perhaps the most popular are those under the comp.os
hierarchy, which are moderated by a person who filters
incoming messages before sending them out to subscribers. Some
Linux-related newsgroups you should follow include:
- comp.os.linux
-
A general discussion on Linux
- comp.os.linux.advocacy
-
A less technical discussion of Linux,
mainly by enthusiastic supporters
- comp.os.linux.development
-
A Linux-related software development
discussion
- comp.os.linux.announce
-
Announcements from vendors, programmers,
and so on
- comp.os.linux.hardware
-
A discussion on hardware issues specific to
Linux
- comp.os.linux.answers
-
A Q&A forum
- comp.os.linux.networking
-
Internetworking discussion, with such
topics as TCP/IP, the Internet, etc.
- comp.os.linux.x
-
A discussion on the X Window
System
Subscribing to one or more of these groups
for at least a few weeks will give you a good feel for the
type of communication that goes on and how useful they may be
to you.
6.2.2.1 Newsgroup archives
Given the explosive
growth of the Usenet service, many people turn to newsgroup
archives on the Internet rather than watch specific groups on
a daily basis. Many groups serve hundreds of messages a day,
so unless the topic is very close to your daily activity (or
heart), monitoring a busy group can become a full-time job.
For example, unless you are a kernel developer or are
debugging specific kernel problems, watching
redhat.kernel.general won't be of much interest to you.
Archives offer information as you need it. A few popular
newsgroup archives are:
- Google groups (http://groups.google.com/)
-
Google.com has acquired the Usenet group
archive of Deja.com. They provide a searchable archive of
Usenet postings that can be helpful when you need to find
recent or historical comments on a particular topic.
- Remarq (http://www.remarq.com/)
-
This site purports to join people together
in communities. Like deja.com, remarq.com contains a searchable
database of Usenet articles.
Newsgroup archives provide you with an
alternate view of Usenet threaded topics. Rather than posting
a request for information and waiting for a response,
searching an archive may yield immediate answers found in
communications that have already occurred. An archive can free
you from reading the headers to messages that are ultimately
of no interest to you.
6.2.2.2 Contributing to Usenet
Depending on your level of expertise on the
topic you're reading, you will inevitably come across a user
question that you can answer with authority. Such a question
is an opportunity for you to help someone. Think of the time
needed to construct a helpful response as the payment for all
the tips and assistance you yourself have received from other
Usenet users over time.
6.2.3 Mailing Lists
Usenet provides an organized set of
communications channels on specific topics. Often, however, a
system administrator or an organization will want to set up a
limited group of users with basic messaging capabilities.
Without universal demand, or failing to make the case for a
legitimate new Usenet group, a mailing
list is often constructed
using list-processing software.
A mailing list is an email autoresponder with
a known list of mail recipients. Any inbound mail to the list
server from among the known list members will be mirrored to
each of the other recipients on the list. This service keeps
list subscribers tuned into their topic but increases email
volume, and subscriptions to a few active mailing lists can
fill your inbox daily.
On the other hand, a mailing list is
proactive, and email received may be more likely to be read
than Usenet newsgroup information. Usenet messages are easily
missed simply because recipients are not paying attention.
Mailing lists can be found on many web sites, where
instructions for joining the lists are available. For example,
the LDP maintains a general-discussion mailing list that you
can join by sending email to [email protected].
This list is for the discussion of LDP issues, document
proposals, and other commentary. Your local Linux User's Group
(LUG) probably also has a mailing list to keep members
up-to-date on events, meetings, and opinions.
6.2.4 Vendor Web Sites and Other
Resources
It is impossible to list the ever-increasing
number of Linux-related sites on the Internet. Each
distribution and many major projects have their own sites, as
do groups such as the Free Software Foundation. Table
6-5 lists some of the most popular, grouped into
categories, in case you've missed them.
Of course, it's impossible to create a static
list of resources that will fulfill your ever-changing needs.
If standard and familiar sources don't offer what you're
looking for, don't hesitate to use a search engine. A targeted
search on a quality search site can be surprisingly fruitful.
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