IN THIS APPENDIX
Now that you are very familiar with the operation of SUSE Linux, you should learn more about it by visiting and researching many freely available online resources. The Internet is an excellent resource to find information on Unix and Linux, especially if you are new to it and need to find information quickly.
With the purchase of SUSE by Novell, a new world of opportunities has opened to you. As you work to learn your new desktop environment, master the shell prompt, or just learn more about Linux in general, many opportunities have opened up for the Linux desktop movement with the release of SUSE Linux. Not only is SUSE Linux now being developed by a company that has had a long-standing success as a server-based platform, it’s being supported by it as well. Novell has spent a lot of time making sure that the online documentation is being developed and the operating system is receiving the support it needs. Beyond the support you may get from Novell, SUSE is also supported well on the public Internet, which is what we will be covering in this appendix.
In Chapter 1, “Welcome to SUSE Linux,” the book started by giving you places online to search if you have issues. For instance, Chapter 1 covered Novell SUSE online help and where to find Linux User Groups (LUGs). As we mentioned, Linux Gazette magazine hosts the Groups of Linux Users Everywhere (GLUE) site at http://glue.linuxgazette.com. Organized geographically, you can browse through the listings or search from the main page. Every group has an email contact, and many have a URL listed.
This appendix builds on that first chapter, expanding the list of information you can search for online and keeping it all in an easy-to-use reference. The listing of information provided here is merely a gateway into the endless sea of what information is really out there if you search hard enough for it. Do be aware that although these sites can be helpful, it is up to you to verify the legitimacy of each website you visit. Sites such as Novell.com will most likely have more (and probably more accurate) information than a website run by a hobbyist. Make sure you use web references carefully and verify your sources of information if you are unsure.
After you venture out on the Internet to research, make sure you continue your studies with Unix and Linux in general and practice as much as possible while researching. Remember, the more you practice, the easier it gets, and after you know commands cold, how to navigate the system, and where things are kept, your control of Unix strengthens.
Beware of buggy and virus-filled software on the Internet. There is so much to learn about Unix and Linux that you can literally search for months and come up with new sources of information daily. Make sure you do not download software that is a virus, or Trojan, or another form of malware. Make sure you check that you download software from legitimate sources. Keep your antivirus software (and any other form of antispyware software you may be running) updated and patched. You may also want to be aware of (and watch out for) “orphanware.” This is software that is created by an entity that basically ends support for the product (for whatever reason) and leaves it, and you, orphaned—without a solution.
In this appendix, you will find a list of Internet resources for learning about the topics covered in this book and expand on where you may be able to find even more information on your version of Linux, or for other general Linux-based information.
In Chapter 1 we covered the basics of where you can find SUSE Linux-specific help. You can get help by using the documentation sources that come with the SUSE Linux operating system, including the Help Center, which is used to find information for you by searching the documentation that comes with the version of Linux you just installed, such as 9.3.
Because documentation and other sources with more than 1,000 programs are included in the distribution, even a book this size cannot cover the basics of everything in your copy of SUSE Linux. There are plenty of places to go to learn more about Linux and help you troubleshoot problems with applications. Printed documentation and, as previously mentioned, the SUSE Help Center will help you find many of the answers to general questions you may have that cannot be answered within this book. You can also try to use SUSE Online Support using the SUSE website at http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/support/. This support system is a great resource for getting help. The first set of menus is for paid support. The second set is for Do-It-Yourself online support.
When you’re trying to find a solution for a problem, click Support Database from the main Support menu, or just go directly to the Support Database at http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/index.html.
This database is searchable, either via keyword or full text. Besides German and English, the database exists in French, Spanish, Czech, and Hungarian (Magyar). The Online Support menu on the main support page links to some interesting HOWTO documents, showing you step by step how to handle issues great and small, from partitioning your hard drive to comparing HTML editors to encrypting email.
At http://www.opensuse.org you’ll find a great deal of information related to SUSE and the Open Source movement. Not only will you find documentation and other links here, but this is also where betas and development releases are usually posted. You can report bugs, participate as a developer, and do much more.
Man pages are also a great way to get help when you need it. If you are running SUSE Linux and find you need help, try the man pages. Man pages are compressed text files, located in /usr/share/doc. They are usually tersely written (usually by their programmers), with information listed under particular categories specified by convention. These include a command reference, a summary of what each option/switch does, and the author of the page or the program. Occasionally, there are known bug statements.
You can use general Linux or SUSE-specific mailing lists to find more help if needed.
http://www.suse.com/en/private/support/online_help/mailinglists/
The following links are Unix specific or Unix vendors that will help you find general Unix-based information.
For a wide array of free Unix and Linux (SUSE and so on) white papers and other help, visit rsnetworks.net.
http://www.rsnetworks.net/masterunixquickly/
The Linux Documentation Project is a great source for HOWTO guides and other information on a variety of Linux topics.
Linux on Laptops offers information for installing Linux on specific makes and models of laptop computers.
Find a LUG near you. Linux user groups often sponsor “install fests.” You bring your PC and they’ll help you install Linux on it. In addition, LUGs have interesting guest speakers at their meetings.
The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation contain source code and documentation for many of the utilities used in Linux distributions.
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/index.html
Use the preceding online search engines (or your other vendor-specific or non-vendor-specific ones) and search on keywords.
Keywords examples: suse, linux, ftp, nfs, rpm, distribution, iso images, novell, unix.
SUSE Linux package listing can be found online at Novell’s website.
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/professional/diff_cd_dvd.html
In the next section of the appendix, we will take a look at the references listed by category. If you have an issue with editing and want to learn more about the vi editor, search the appendix for the heading on editing, for example.
Each chapter in this book includes a reference section with links to more or related information to the subject of the chapter. Use it to build a set of bookmarks to help you learn more about Linux in general and SUSE Linux in particular.
In this section, the references have been broken down into three major sections: systems administration, which cover X Window, Office applications, and so on; network and security references, which cover tutorials and information on IP addressing, name services, and so on; and programming and LAMP references, which, if you are getting into development on Linux, will surely help you out in your development efforts.
Following are a few general sites to look at first before you delve too deeply into other online sources. These will prove to be some of your best bets.
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/—The Linux portal at IBM. News, reports, and white papers related to this important Linux player. Check the SUSE Linux link under “Linux Distributors” for material related to IBM support for SUSE Linux products.
http://www.suse.com/—The English-language home of SUSE Linux. News, downloads, support.
http://www.suse.com/us/private/support—Search the support database, read HOWTOs, subscribe to a mailing list.
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en—Direct link to the SUSE support database.
This set of links points to useful resources on installing Linux, booting, partitioning, and other installation and system-management tools.
http://irc.freenode.net—A great starting place to go for information about SUSE, Linux, or anything related.
http://linux.dell.com—Home of the Dell Linux Community. Dell is focused on Enterprise Linux and will sell you servers with either SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Server, but the community site offers mailing lists to support Linux users on desktops and laptops as well.
http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml—Look here for Linux equivalents of Windows applications.
http://cdb.suse.de—The SUSE hardware compatibility database.
http://www.linuxprinting.org—Want to see if your printer works in Linux? Here’s the place.
http://www.linux-usb.org—The Linux-USB project, with information on supported devices and drivers.
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices—The Linux USB devices database; search here for compatible devices.
http://www.linmodems.org—Linux drivers for software-based modems.
http://www.linuxcertified.com and http://emperorlinux.com—Two companies that deliver laptops with Linux preinstalled.
http://linux-laptop.net—More information on Linux-friendly laptops.
http://www.linux1394.org—The Linux FireWire project, with information on drivers for these devices.
http://elks.sourceforge.net—The Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset, an attempt to build some Linux functionality that will run on an Intel 286 and earlier processor.
http://www.lnx-bbc.org—Home of the Linux Bootable Business Card project, producing a “live CD” in the shape of standard business card.
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html—Home of GNU Parted, the free-software disk partitioning tool.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO/index.html—From 2000, this Linux Installation HOWTO was written by programming guru Eric S. Raymond.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub—The GRUB bootloader home page.
http://www.pathname.com/fhs—Probably more than you want to know about the new Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/posix—The IEEE POSIX information page.
http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/bash/bashtop.html—Chet Ramey’s bash page. He is the current maintainer of the bash project.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/—The Bash Beginners Guide as a web page. If you visit www.tldp.org/Guides you can get this in other formats, along with other excellent Linux resources.
http://www.tcsh.org/Welcome—The tcsh Wiki. Learn more and contribute your own knowledge about this C Shell.
http://www.zsh.org/—Home of the Z Shell. Select a nearby mirror.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-z.html—Good introduction to the Z Shell from IBM.
http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/—Home of the Midnight Commander. Screenshots, FAQs, and a to-do list for the developers.
http://www.dotfiles.com/—Explore contributed configuration files for various shells, editors, and other tools.
http://www.shelldorado.com/—Heiner’s Shelldorado. Much scripting information for all shells, but a good introduction, too.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html—The GNU/Emacs home page.
http://www.dotemacs.de/—The “very unofficial dotemacs home.” Explore the many ways to configure your Emacs.
http://www.emacswiki.org—Find new modules and helpful people here.
http://www.vim.org/—The Vim home page.
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/—Where to find documentation of all sorts for Vim.
http://www.yzis.org/—The new project from the developers of Kvim for the K Desktop Environment. The yzis editor is a new editor based on vim.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/—The home for Joe’s Own Editor.
http://jedit.org/—The Java-based editor.
http://linux.about.com/od/embedded/l/blnewbie_toc.htm—The Linux Newbie Administrator Guide. A basic overview.
http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/—The sudo main page. Downloads, documentation, and resources for this command.
http://www.x.org—The X.org Foundation, the hub of X Window System development activity.
http://freedesktop.org—The effort to produce minimum standards for free desktop software. Not a formal standards body, but a “collaboration zone” where projects are hosted and KDE and GNOME developers can discuss concerns.
http://www.kde.org—The home of the K Desktop Environment. Well-organized site, with links to nearly everything relevant to KDE.
http://dot.kde.org—The KDE News site, with links to online articles about KDE and its applications, along with press releases and the like.
http://www.gnome.org—The GNOME home.
http://www.gnomedesktop.org—“Footnotes,” the GNOME News site.
http://www.novell.com/linux/ximian.html—The Ximian area of Novell.com. Information about Evolution, Mono, and the Ximian Desktop.
http://xwinman.org—An Internet hub for learning about and trying Window Managers for X.
http://sawmill.sourceforge.net—Sawfish is a window manager for the X Window System. It was formerly known as Sawmill.
http://www.windowmaker.org—WindowMaker is a window manager used in Linux.
http://icesoundmanager.sourceforge.net/IcePref2—IceWM is an advanced Linux configuration tool.
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html—The Neal Stephenson essay, “In the Beginning Was the Command Line.” See also an authorized “update” by Garrett Birkel, “The Command Line in 2004,” at http://home.earthlink.net/~android606/commandline.
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash—The official bash site at the GNU Project. Download the latest, and read the Introduction to Bash.
http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/bash/bashtop.html—Chet Ramey’s bash site. Ramey is the current bash maintainer. Looks very much like the official page, but also has the bash FAQ list.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html—A bash guide for beginners.
http://ldp.nllgg.nl/LDP/abs/html—The Advanced bash scripting guide. “This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction.” Read online, or download the PDF or the SGML source.
http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/development/shell/config_the_bash_shell.html—Configuring the bash shell.
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Shells/Basic_Console_Commands.html—Learn these commands and you can be comfortable saying you know bash “well enough.”
http://www.kornshell.com/doc—Assorted documentation for the commercial Korn shell, ksh.
http://www.tcsh.org—The tcsh wiki. Although it does not contain a wealth of information, check out the FAQ and TipsNTricks page. You can also subscribe to the two tcsh mailing lists from here.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot—Perl guru Tom Christiansen’s famous 1996 essay, “Csh Programming Considered Harmful.” Why it’s a bad idea to script in the C Shell.
http://www.zsh.org—Home of the Z Shell. Very useful.
http://www.OpenOffice.org—The home of the open-source productivity suite. Extended documentation, a knowledge base, and links to the various mailing lists that keep this project running.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/—OpenOffice.org’s commercial big brother, produced and marketed by Sun Microsystems. This version includes a database and a few other closed-source widgets and tools.
http://www.taming-openoffice-org.com/—Aimed at the person who wants to get more out of OOo. Many valuable tips, links, and pointers to other books that cover OOo in depth.
http://www.KOffice.org—The KDE Office Suite home. Downloads, news, mailing lists, and archives.
http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office—The umbrella home for the GO Suite.
http://www.abisource.com—The AbiWord page.
http://www.gnumeric.org—The Gnumeric page.
http://www.softmaker.de/index_en.htm—Softmaker Office.
http://en.hancom.com/products/hancomoffice20.html—Hancom Office.
http://www.gnucash.org—GnuCash.
http://www.scribus.net—Home of the Scribus desktop publishing tool. Be sure to check out the detailed and very helpful tutorial at docs.scribus.net.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/—The Dia diagramming tool. Useful documentation not included in the package.
http://www.insilmaril.de/vym/—The View Your Mind page. Written in VYM and exported to HTML. Nice way to see how the program works.
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc—The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture sound card matrix. Check here for more information on support for your card.
http://www.linux-sound.org—From music made with Linux to musician mailing lists to player and production software, the jumping-off point for sound and music under Linux.
http://www.xmms.org/—Home of the X Multimedia System (XMMS). News, downloads, plug-ins, skins, and support for this multifaceted media player.
http://www.vorbis.com—Hows and whys for the Ogg Vorbis audio format.
http://www.exploits.org/v4l/—Video for Linux information page. Technical information on the V4L APIs, drivers for supported cards, and personal video recorders. Links to software for making video of all types. When typing this URL out, know that the last character is an L (as in Video4Linux), not a numeral 1. Should you type the numeral, you get a rather snarky error message.
http://www.mythtv.org—The MythTV personal video recorder software. Installation instructions, examples of MythTV in action.
http://anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2190&p=1—A detailed and honest explanation of a successful MythTV installation on SUSE Linux.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu—The MPlayer headquarters for that varied and full-featured video player.
http://xinehq.de—The Xine headquarters; news and downloads for this video player.
http://www.gphoto.org/—Linux Management software for digital camera images.
http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php—The gphoto list of supported cameras.
http://www.teaser.fr/~hfiguiere/linux/digicam.html—Digital Camera Support for Unix, Linux, and BSD. If your camera is not on the gphoto list, this site may help you find out why and offer suggestions.
http://digikam.sourceforge.net—The KDE digiKam front end for gphoto. Look here for plug-ins and new versions, which seem to come out every two months.
http://www.gimp.org—The very well organized home of The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Check out the Tutorials section, with walk-throughs for all skill levels, beginner to expert.
http://gug.sunsite.dk—The global GIMP User Group. Mailing lists, a large gallery of images and textures, tutorials, and articles to help make you a better GIMPer.
http://icculus.org/lgfaq—The Linux Gamers’ FAQ; get your questions answered.
http://www.happypenguin.org—The Linux Game Tome, a catalog of Linux games of all sorts. Player ratings, news, forums, and links.
http://linuxgames.com—LinuxGames, with all sorts of news related to the topic.
http://www.kde.org/kdegames—The KDE Gaming area, with descriptions of all the games included with KDE.
http://www.ggzgamingzone.org—Play Linux games online for free.
http://www.freeciv.org—The Freeciv wiki site. All things Freeciv, with translations in seven languages.
http://www.winehq.org—The Wine Project headquarters. Be sure to vote for your favorite Windows application to be ported using Wine in the Applications Database section.
http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools—WineTools offers a relatively painless installation of Wine and a bunch of well-known free applications, including Internet Explorer.
http://www.codeweavers.com—Codeweavers, Inc., the makers of Crossover Office.
http://frankscorner.org—This site helps you get the most out of Wine. Contains FAQs and HOWTOs to get you through most problems.
http://www.vmware.com—WMWare Inc., where you can get information and a free 30-day evaluation copy of this virtual machine.
http://www.win4lin.com—Win4Lin, helping people run Windows 98 applications, and now Windows 2000/XP applications.
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net—The DOSBox site. Check on support for your DOS game, even find downloadable copies of some ancient games.
http://dosemu.org—The home of DOSEmu, the DOS emulator.
http://freedos.org—The FreeDOS project. Assorted applications to use in DOSBox or dosemu.
http://os-emulation.net/basiliskII/system753_tutorial/linux—A tutorial on installing and running Basilisk II on Linux.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen—The Xen virtual machine monitor project home.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO.html—Always the place to begin. The file systems HOWTO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem—Wikipedia on how file systems work in various operating systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems—Helpful chart on differences between file systems, with links to the Wikipedia articles on each file system.
http://www.namesys.com—The Group in charge of ReiserFS.
http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/FAQs/ext3-faq.html—The Linux ext3 FAQ list. Differences between ext2 and ext3, and troubleshooting problems.
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs—The XFS for Linux site.
http://sources.redhat.com/lvm2—The Logical Volume Manager home page.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO—The LVM HOWTO page. Should have information on LVM2 by now.
http://usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=33142—Tuning up IDE hard drives with hdparm. A useful tutorial.
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted—The GNU Parted home page.
http://www.nvu.com/—The nvu (N-View) project for a Mozilla-based web-authoring tool.
http://quanta.sourceforge.net—Quanta Plus project page for the KDE web-authoring tool.
http://kdewebdev.org—The KDE WebDev suite site. For Quanta and its subsidiary tools.
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl—Bluefish, the GTK-based web-authoring tool.
http://bfwiki.tellefsen.net—The Bluefish Wiki, where the development team keeps the rest of us posted on what’s happening.
http://www.screem.org—A GNOME/GTK editor for HTML and XML files.
http://www.ndeepak.info/stuff/vtu/ginf—“Ginf is not FrontPage,” another effort to simplify web authoring.
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey—The all-purpose online web-design school. Tutorials on various web technologies for all skill levels, from basic HTML to Apache to ColdFusion. Like Wired magazine, occasionally the pages lean to the illegible.
http://webdesign.about.com—Down-to-earth advice about website design. Free online classes in HTML and cascading style sheets, too.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0124049—“Notes from the Metaverse,” the author’s technology weblog. Lots of links and news related to open-source software and SUSE Linux.
http://www.planetsuse.org—Planet SUSE, a group blog of SUSE Linux developers.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools—The current directory of blogging tools and services. You’ll find something useful here.
http://www.blosxom.com—Download and learn about Blosxom, the CGI-based blogging tool.
http://www.billstclair.com/blogmax—The Blogmax extension for Emacs.
http://wordpress.org—WordPress blog and content management tool. Very busy and helpful support forums.
http://www.blogger.com—Still the easiest and cheapest way to start blogging. Now managed by Google.
http://www.sixapart.com—The company behind Movable Type and Typepad. Access either product from the company blog page.
http://www.livejournal.com—LiveJournal is a place for more personal blogs and building communities of kindred bloggers.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0102385/2003/04/24.html#a329—A description of how to run the Windows blog program Radio Userland under Wine.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution—The Evolution home page.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird—The Mozilla Thunderbird page. Links to MozillaZine knowledge base and help forums.
http://pim.kde.org—Home of the KDE Personal Information Management suite: Kontact, KMail, Korganizer, and the ancillary tools.
http://sylpheed.good-day.net—Sylpheed, the other GTK-based mail client.
http://www.mutt.org—The mongrel of text-based email clients.
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview—The UUDeview multiformat file attachment decoder. Works with all encoding formats (BinHex, yEnc, MIME, UUEncode). Enjoy the “Introduction to Encoding” document and get some useful history, too.
http://www.yenc.org/linux.htm—Linux readers and writers for the yEnc coding format.
http://email.about.com/cs/standards/a/base64_encoding.htm—An excellent description of base64 encoding.
http://www.postfix.org/start.html—The Postfix home page. Be sure to click the Web Sites link on the menu to find a mirror site close to you.
http://www.seaglass.com/postfix/faq.html—The Postfix mailing list FAQ, maintained by Kyle Dent, author of Postfix: The Definitive Guide.
http://www.sendmail.org—The Sendmail home page.
http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail—The Fetchmail home page.
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html—Paul Graham’s original essay, “A Plan for Spam,” outlines the theory of Bayesian filtering.
http://spamassassin.apache.org—SpamAssassin home page. Check out the wiki pages for downloadable custom rulesets.
http://bogofilter.org—Eric Raymond’s Bogofilter project.
http://www.nidelven-it.no/articles/introduction_to_thunderbird_5—A good introduction to spam filtering with Mozilla Thunderbird.
http://www.iki.fi/era/procmail/mini-faq.html—The Procmail FAQ. In his own words, “The author wanted to call this a ’Mini-FAQ’ but it keeps getting bigger. There are plans to rename it the ’Bronto-FAQ.’”
http://pm-doc.sourceforge.net—The Procmail Documentation Project. See the PM-Tips page for sample rulesets/recipes and many other good ideas.
http://www.clamav.net—Home of the open source Clam antivirus program.
http://groups.google.com—Google Groups. Read Usenet on the Web and create groups of your own.
http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/products/inn—The InterNetNews Usenet server and reader.
http://slrn.sourceforge.net—“s-lang read news”; the slrn newsreader.
http://knode.sourceforge.net—KNode newsreader in Kontact and KDE.
http://pan.rebelbase.com—The Pan newsreader for GNOME.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb—WikiWikiWeb, Ward Cunningham’s original collaborative site.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ChoosingaWiki—Choosing a WikiEngine, with help from Ward Cunningham’s assembled masses.
http://zwiki.org—ZWiki, the Zope-based wiki engine included in SUSE Linux. Docs still in progress.
http://twiki.org—Another popular Wiki engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org—The Wikipedia home page, perhaps the best example of how wikis work.
http://www.list.org—Home of the Mailman list manager.
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo—The Majordomo list manager.
http://www.siliconexus.com/MajorCool—The web interface for Majordomo.
http://www.irchelp.org—The place to get help with Internet Relay Chat.
http://www.irc.org/links.html—IRC clients, channels, networks, and bots. Find them here.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IRC—The Linux IRC mini-HOWTO.
http://kopete.kde.org—Kopete, the KDE instant messenger and IRC client.
http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide—The Jabber user guide, for learning about this open source IM protocol. Jabber.org also hosts a public IM server for you to connect with.
http://gabber.sourceforge.net—The GNOME Jabber client.
http://xchat.org—The Xchat home page.
http://www.licq.org—LICQ, the mother of all Linux instant messengers.
http://gaim.sourceforge.net—This IM client started as just an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) clone, but now supports most other IM networks as well.
http://www.gnomemeeting.org—GnomeMeeting videoconferencing home page.
http://www.kernel.org—The Linux Kernel Archives. Where to find the latest kernel and more information.
http://www.kernel.org/mirrors—Download the kernel from a server near you.
http://www.kernel-traffic.org—The Kernel Traffic newsletter, a weekly summary of what’s happening on the Kernel mailing list.
http://www.gnu.org—GNU’s not Unix. The home of many kernel-related projects. Get software and documentation here and a healthy dose of free-software philosophy.
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html—The make manual. This utility is much more than a source-code build environment.
http://kniggit.net/wwol26.html—The Wonderful World of Linux 2.6, a guide to the latest version of the kernel by Joseph Pranevich.
http://www.kernelnewbies.org—For people who want to try their hand at kernel hacking. The Kernel Newbies host an IRC chat channel, #kernelnewbies, and a wiki from this site.
http://tldp.org/LDP/lki—Linux Kernel 2.4 Internals Guide. Get into more depth about how the kernel works.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/os.html#OSKERNEL—These HOWTOs explore the kernel in several ways.
http://minix1.hampshire.edu—Al Woodhull’s Minix site. Learn more about Linux’s “parent” OS.
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html—The official Minix site.
http://jungla.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html—Its origins are similar to those of a FAQ document, but this annotated “Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or Understanding the Linux Kernel” is more of a reference guide, with pointers to an abundance of useful kernel information.
http://kerneltrap.org—“Your Ultimate Source for Kernel News.”
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual—The GRUB manual.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO.html—The LILO mini-HOWTO.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO—How to back up your system to support a bare-metal recovery.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html—The Linux System Administration Guide. See Chapter 12 on backups.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Ext2fs-Undeletion.html—Undeleting files from an Ext2/3 file system.
http://amanda.sourceforge.net—The Amanda home page.
http://www.backupcentral.com—Storage Mountain, with much information and links on backups and other storage-related issues.
http://linuxgazette.net/104/odonovan.html—An excellent and easy-to-understand article on using rsync and cron for automated backups.
http://www.k3b.org—The home of K3B, the KDE CD/DVD burning tool.
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-filesystem/gmail-filesystem.html—The GMailFS program, which allows you to convert your gigabyte of Gmail storage into a working Linux file system.
http://www.bluehaze.com.au/unix/cdbkup.html—Using a shell script to back up to CD.
http://www.mondorescue.org—A rescue tool that can produce bootable CDs to restore a broken system.
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11504.html—A screenshot-filled YaST tutorial from Novell’s Cool Solutions site.
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager—Written to explain the big changes in YaST with v8.1, there’s a lot of good information here on how YaST works.
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/04/82_susewatcher.html—Documentation for SUSEwatcher, including descriptions for the icons.
http://www.rpm.org—Home for information on the Red Hat Package Management system. The site includes an online version of Ed Bailey’s 2000 book, Maximum RPM.
http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic—The Synaptic GUI for apt. Download the current source from here if you can’t wait for a new package via
apt.http://packman.links2linux.org—Excellent repository for packages not yet included in the official distribution. Download directly or use APT.
http://rpmseek.com—Find more RPM packages here.
http://freshmeat.net—A giant repository of Linux and other open-source software, organized by date received. Thus, the “freshest meat” is at the top.
http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/bios2/1.shtml—The LostCircuits BIOS Guide. The site itself is a bit ad heavy, but there is excellent information on various BIOS settings.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-slack.html—Joe Brockmeier explains the Slackware Linux boot process, which is not so different from SUSE Linux.
http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk—The Linux Newbie Administrator Guide. Very helpful.
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm—“GRUB from the Ground Up,” a fine explanation of how to create a GRUB boot floppy and boot it on a disabled machine.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual—The GRUB manual, in various formats.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO.html—The LILO Mini-HOWTO.
http://tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy—Linux Administration Made Easy. See Section 4.8 on booting with LILO.
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/17/1832239—A brief review of KSysGuard.
http://docs.kde.org/en/3.3/kdebase/ksysguard—The KSysGuard Handbook.
http://www.gkrellm.net—The home of GKrellM.
This set of links points to useful resources on IP addressing, networking, and securing Linux.
http://arin.net—The American Registry for Internet Numbers, the body that assigns public IP addresses for the United States.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html—Search for, or get a list of, Internet Engineering Task Force Requests for Comment.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO—The Linux IPv6 HOWTO.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2460.txt—The IPv6 Standard document.
http://linuxreviews.org/features/ipv6—Interesting article on “Why You Want IPv6.”
http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers—Learn what ports are assigned to what applications at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority site.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Servers/Address_Management/Dynamic_DNS_Services/—The place to find Dynamic DNS service providers.
http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp—The keepers of the SUSE Linux default DHCP server package and the optional client. You can view the current DHCP README file online at the ISC site.
http://dhcp-monger.est-unique.net/wakka.php?wiki=Welcome—The DHCP-Mongers Wiki. Read man pages, search the mailing lists, submit new information.
http://nfs.sourceforge.net—The Network File System project page, including FAQ list.
http://www.samba.org—The Samba home page. See the HOWTO collection and Samba-By-Example Guide in the Documentation section.
http://www.wi-fizone.org—Find a wireless hotspot wherever you may be at this site, sponsored by the Wi-Fi Alliance trade group.
http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802—Get the official IEEE standard document for any 802.xx networking specification here. This runs the gamut from Ethernet (802.3) to WiFi (802.11) and beyond.
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/11/wavelan.html—Wireless network setup from the SUSE Support Database.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html—Much good material on Linux Wireless Networking.
http://www.securityfocus.com/unix—This comprehensive security site offers security news, mailing lists, and even some firewall rule sets.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com—Get the weekly Linux Advisory Watch and Linux Security Week newsletters to keep up with the latest information and patches. Tutorials for beginners and articles for security professionals.
http://www.insecure.org—The home of the
nmapsecurity scanner.http://www.ethereal.com—The freeware Ethereal network protocol analyzer and packet sniffer.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html#toc1—The Linux Documentation Project. This is an in-depth DNS how to with DNS general information as well.
http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/—Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (ISC) is a nonprofit public benefit corporation dedicated to supporting the infrastructure of the universal connected self-organizing Internet. This is an in-depth DNS/BIND how to with DNS/BIND general information as well.
http://www.arin.net—American Registry for Internet Numbers. A nonprofit registry responsible for the administration and registration of Internet Protocol (IP) numbers in North and South America, South Africa, the Caribbean, and all other regions administered currently by Network Solutions, Inc.
http://www.isc.org/bind.html—Berkeley Internet Name Domain information direct. BIND software, developed by the University of California at Berkeley, implements a DNS server and a resolver library that enables clients to store and retrieve resources or objects and share this information with other resources on the network. This link covers BIND in detailed information.
http://www.iana.org/—Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. IANA is a government-funded authority that assigns and distributes international domain names and IP numbers or Internet addresses and oversees the Internet software protocols of the officially sanctioned root servers.
http://www.internic.net/—A registry responsible for name assignment within the following top level domains: COM, EDU, NET, GOV, and ORG.
http://linuxprinting.org—A central compendium of information on printing in Linux. Download official and unofficial open-source drivers. Read the recommendations in the Suggested Printer List when you’re in the market for a new printer. Ask questions in the forums.
http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/products/printing_imaging—Hewlett Packard’s Linux driver efforts.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO—From the page: “A collection of information on how to generate, preview, print and fax anything under GNU/Linux.”
http://www.cups.org—The place to keep up with the Common Unix Printing System.
http://www.pwg.org/ipp—The IETF Printer Working Group’s page on the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), used by CUPS. Very technical, but a good FAQ.
http://www.ghostscript.com—The Ghostscript news and community page. New release announcements and a community component based on “diary entries.”
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost—The ghostscript home page.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat—Learn more about Acrobat and PDF from the official site. You can also download the free Reader here.
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us—The Brother Linux support and driver status page.
http://www.bluetooth.com—The Bluetooth website.
http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth—Marcel Holtmann’s Linux and Bluetooth page. Articles in English and German, plus downloads.
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/s.zachariadis/btpalmlinux.html—A guide to connecting your Palm PDA to your PC with Bluetooth.
http://tuxmobil.org—The place to get information on Linux on all sorts of mobile hardware: laptops, PDAs, and cell phones. Monthly newsletter as well.
http://tuxmobil.org/Infrared-HOWTO/Infrared-HOWTO.html—The Linux Infrared HOWTO. Configuring and using IrDA.
http://linux-laptop.net—Another portable Linux site.
http://www.sane-project.org—Home of the Linux scanner driver project “Scanner Access Now Easy.” Search to see whether your scanner is supported by Linux.
http://www.ntp.org—Network Time Protocol home.
http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome—The Public NTP Server list. Find a NTP server to connect to. Much more helpful information, too.
http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html—The Linux ACPI HOWTO.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/hardware.html#HWMODEMS—Linux Documentation Project modems HOWTOs. What you need to know, sometimes in excruciating detail, about ordinary modems, Winmodems, DSL modems, and cable modems. Some of it is outdated, but the revision dates are always posted here.
http://axion.physics.ubc.ca/ppp-linux.html—Trying to set up PPP manually? This is the place to go, as W.G. Unruh has worked hard to troubleshoot many PPP problems.
http://linmodems.org—A place to learn about software-driven “Winmodems” and attempts to support them in Linux.
http://start.at/modem—“Winmodems are not Modems.” A large list of modem models to check for Linux compatibility.
http://www.swcp.com/~jgentry/pers.html—The Linux Dial-in Server Setup Guide. A step-by-step approach to setting up your dial-in server.
http://www.vsftpd.beasts.org—The Very Secure FTP.
http://www.cert.org—The Computer Emergency Response Team. The place to go to learn about current security holes and the latest “virus alert” email.
http://www.openssh.org—The open-source Secure Shell home. OpenSSH includes the Secure FTP client.
http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/anonymous_ftp_config.html—Excellent guidelines for safely setting up an anonymous FTP server.
http://www.gftp.org—The GNOME FTP client.
http://kbear.sourceforge.net—A KDE-based FTP client.
http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/doc—Documentation for the NcFTP client and server.
http://wget.sunsite.dk—Wget, the GNU tool for noninteractive (scripted) file transfer.
http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/20/1910209—A pithy description of what you can do with wget.
http://www.gnutelliums.com/linux_unix—A list of Unix/Linux Gnutella clients.
http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net—GTK-Gnutella.
http://bittorrent.com—Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent home page.
http://azureus.sourceforge.net—Azureus, the Java BitTorrent client.
http://gift.sourceforge.net—The GiFT open-source FastTrack peer-to-peer project.
http://apollon.sourceforge.net—A GUI for GiFT.
http://kmldonkey.org—KMLDonkey GUI client.
http://www.nongnu.org/mldonkey—The home of MLDonkey, where you can download the core program. Front page links to all the file-sharing networks the client supports.
http://www.mldonkeyworld.com—News, downloads, and support forums for all MLDonkey users.
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrent—The eTree BitTorrent FAQ page, with much good information on BitTorrent clients, how BitTorrent works, and where to find content.
http://tldp.org/LDP/sag/html—The Linux System Administrator’s Guide.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Authentication-HOWTO—Setting up passwords.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/admin.html#ADMSECURITY—The Linux security HOWTOs all in one place. Be sure to read over the Security-HOWTO for an overview.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Shadow-Password-HOWTO.html—Explains the shadow password system.
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11685.html—A brief, but nice, overview of permissions and how to set them in Nautilus/GNOME.
http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo—SuperUser Do lets you delegate specific administrative tasks to particular users without turning over the Root password.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam—Pluggable Authentication Modules in Linux.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pseries/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.doc/aixbman/security/pam_overview.htm—This guide to PAM under IBM’s flavor of Unix is helpful to Linux users, too.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sc7.html—This article on “Practical Linux Security” offers an interesting take on handling users.
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci928466,00.html—This Linux Security Learning Guide is a handy set of articles and links on the range of security topics.
http://www.schneier.com/blowfish.html—The Blowfish encryption algorithm home page.
http://linuxgazette.net/issue81/vikas.html—A summary of the Magic SysRq process.
http://www.learntosubnet.com—A good source on learning how to use IP addresses and subnet them. Good (and free) lessons on how to work with IP addressing and name services.
The following links and resources are for you if you need to find more information on programming with Linux, web development, LAMP, and so on.
http://www.apache.org—The Apache Software Foundation umbrella site. Access all Apache projects from here.
http://httpd.apache.org—The place to start for information on the Apache Web Server. News, downloads, FAQs. Check the Docs subproject for a PDF user’s guide.
http://modules.apache.org—The Apache Module Registry. Locate modules to install, and contribute modules you’ve created.
http://www.apachetoday.com—A little cluttered and ad ridden, but ServerWatch’s Apache Today site is still an excellent source of Apache news and tutorials.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/apps.html#SERVERHTTP—An index of web-server–related HOWTOs. Mostly dealing with Apache, but a few others, too.
http://susefaq.sourceforge.net/faq/apache.html—The Unofficial SUSE FAQ list includes useful SUSE-specific Apache information.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html—The monthly Netcraft survey of popular web servers. As this is being written, nearly 70 percent of the Web runs on Apache.
http://modpython.org—Home of the
mod_pythonApache module.http://modruby.net—The
mod_rubypage.http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd—Home of
thttpd.https://helix-server.helixcommunity.org—The open-source streaming media server.
http://www.zope.org—All the latest and greatest from the Zope community.
http://gcc.gnu.org—Home of the GNU Compiler Collection.
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.0/changes.html—What’s new in GCC 4.0.
http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf—The Autoconf configuration utility.
http://gcc.gnu.org/java—GCC’s Java compiler, GCJ.
http://subversion.tigris.org—The very well-designed Subversion site.
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0—The online book Version Control with Subversion.
https://www.cvshome.org—The CVS site, secure and also well organized.
http://www.linux.ie/articles/tutorials/cvs.php—A somewhat cheeky CVS tutorial.
http://eclipse.org—The hub of the Eclipse community. Everything you need to get going and stay going.
http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com—The place to find your needed Eclipse plug-ins, with news, too.
http://www.kdevelop.org—News, forums, documentation, and a real-time chart indicating the number of downloads per hour of this IDE.
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net—The GNOME/GTK+ IDE.
http://www.digitalfanatics.org/projects/qt_tutorial—Tutorial for C++ developers to learn Qt.
http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3—The official reference documentation for the current version of Qt.
http://www.rpm.org—Home for information on the Red Hat Package Management system. The site includes an online version of Ed Bailey’s 2000 book, Maximum RPM.
http://www.mysql.com/—MySQL database home page. The World’s Most Popular Open Source Database. The software’s official home page with news, downloads, and documentation.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/—MySQL database home page’s documentation repository. If you want to learn more about MySQL, visit the documentation center.
http://www.postgresql.org/—PostgreSQL database home pages. PostgreSQL is one of the world’s most advanced open-source database supporting almost all SQL constructs, including subselects, transactions, user-defined types, and so on.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/—PostgreSQL database home pages documentation repository. There is a wealth of PostgreSQL information available online and it can be found here to start with. This section of the website contains current and archived manuals for PostgreSQL users and administrators.
http://www.knoda.org/—The home page to download the newest Knoda client or learn more about it.
http://www.perl.com—“The Source for Perl.” News, articles, blogs, and the like.
http://www.perl.org—The Perl Directory. Links to the Perl universe.
http://www.cpan.org—The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. CPAN is the place to download modules and other gotta-have Perl stuff. If you write something useful, upload it here.
http://use.perl.org—The Perl news center. Find out about conferences, user group meetings, and assorted fun facts.
http://learn.perl.org—Where to begin with Perl online. Tutorials, book recommendations for all levels of expertise, and a beginner’s mailing list.
http://www.tpj.com—The Perl Journal, the monthly magazine.
http://www.pm.org—PerlMongers user groups.
http://dev.perl.org/perl6—The Perl 6 hub. Get overall design information here and the latest on development of Perl 6 and the Parrot interpreter.
http://python.org—The center of the Python universe. Just about everything Python links here.
http://www.pythonware.com/daily—The Daily Python URL, Python news and comment from around the Web and the blogosphere.
http://www.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide—For new programmers, a Python guide.
http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html—This tutorial promises to teach you Python in an afternoon.
http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html—Home for the Eric Python IDE.
http://www.pyzine.com—An online Python technical journal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_programming_language—A long and detailed entry, and a worthy introduction to the Python language.
http://www.php.net—The PHP home page.
http://www.phpbuilder.com—Tutorial and news site.
http://codewalkers.com—Another news site, with the occasional PHP coding contest with interesting challenges and real prizes.
http://php.resourceindex.com—The PHP Resource Index. The main draw for this site is the thousands of ready-made PHP scripts, functions, and classes. You can also find links to other tutorials and the larger PHP community.
http://www.zend.com—Zend Technologies, owners of the Zend scripting engine at the heart of PHP 4 and 5.
http://weberdev.com—More code, tutorials, weblogs.
http://www.hotscripts.com—Scripts for every webmaster’s need, mostly in PHP, but also in Perl, Python, JavaScripts, and even some in C and C++. Updated constantly, this is a great place to look for something interesting.
http://phpdeveloper.org—News and forums for all types of PHP coders.
http://www.thelinuxconsultancy.co.uk/phpeditors.php—A filterable (by OS and license type) list of editors and IDEs that support PHP coding.
http://forums.devnetwork.net—The PHP Developers Network web forums.
http://www.planet-php.net—A collection of PHP-related weblogs.
http://www.viapanda.com/nvuphp.html—A FAQ outlining problems with using PHP in the Nvu web-authoring application, with some workarounds.
http://phpnuke.org—One of the original PHP-based content management systems.
http://www.phpbb.com—phpBB, a popular PHP-based community forum system.
In the last section of this appendix, we will look at the newsgroups you can participate in to find out more about Linux.
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