In fact, you're starting to wonder why you thought this Linux thing was a good idea in the first place. Fortunately, Unix has a long history of carrying its documentation on-line. So here's a few tips on how to discover what you need to know without a set of printed manuals. A whistle-stop tour of man , apropos , whatis , more or less , ls and find . Where to look for information on Usenet other than comp.os.linux.help and where to look for information off Usenet, as well as in Linux Journal .
First stop is the helpful trinity of man , apropos and whatis .
The most essential of these three is man . The NAME entry gives the name and a short description of the things explained on this man page. The SEE ALSO section lists other man pages which are relevant to the one you have just looked up. There are three very useful options to the man program. The -a option tells the man program to not stop looking for pages at the first one it finds, but to scan all the man page sections and present you with all the relevant pages.