8.5.2.1 HOWTOs
HOWTOs are usually a short, informal, step-by-step guides to accomplishing specic
tasks. HOWTOs can also be found in the package howto and are installed under /usr/
share/doc/howto.
8.5.2.2 Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs (frequently asked questions) are a series of questions and answers. They
originate from Usenet newsgroups where the purpose was to reduce continuous re-
posting of the same basic questions.
8.5.2.3 Guides
Manuals and guides for various topics or programs can be found at http://www.tldp
.org/guides.html. They range from Bash Guide for Beginners to Linux Filesystem
Hierarchy to Linux Administrator's Security Guide . Generally, guides are more detailed
and exhaustive than HOWTOs or FAQs. They are usually written by experts for experts.
8.5.3 Usenet
Created in 1979 before the rise of the Internet, Usenet is one of the oldest computer
networks and still in active use. The format and transmission of Usenet articles is
very similar to e-mail, but is developed for a many-to-many communication.
Usenet is organized into seven topical categories: comp.* for computer-related dis-
cussions, misc.* for miscellaneous topics, news.* for newsgroup-related matters,
rec.* for recreation and entertainment, sci.* for science-related discussions, soc.*
for social discussions, and talk.* for various controversial topics. The top levels are
split in subgroups. For instance, comp.os.linux.hardware is a newsgroup for Linux-
specic hardware issues.
Before you can post an article, have your client connect to a news server and sub-
scribe to a specic newsgroup. News clients include Knode or Evolution. Each news
server communicates to other news servers and exchanges articles with them. Not
all newsgroups may be available on your news server.
Interesting newsgroups for Linux users are comp.os.linux.apps,
comp.os.linux.questions, and comp.os.linux.hardware. If you cannot nd a specic
newsgroup, go to http://www.linux.org/docs/usenetlinux.html. Follow the general
Usenet rules available online at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/posting-rules/
part1/.
8.5.4 Wikipedia: The Free Online Encyclopedia
Wikipedia is “a multilingual encyclopedia designed to be read and edited by anyone”
(see http://en.wikipedia.org). The content of Wikipedia is created by its users and
is published under a dual free license (GFDL and CC-BY-SA). However, as Wikipedia
can be edited by any visitor, it should be used only as a starting point or general
guide. There is much incorrect or incomplete information in it.
122 Start-Up
