Man pages are written by sys-admin and developers for IT techs, and are intended more as a reference than as a how to. Man pages are very useful for people who are already familiar with Linux, Unix, and BSD operating systems. Use man pages when you just need to know the syntax for particular commands or configuration file, but they are not helpful for new Linux users. Man pages are not good for learning something new for the first time. Here are thirty best documentation sites on the web for learning Linux and Unix like operating systems.


Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson working with UNIX PDP11

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FAQ Updates: Dec/22/2011

Our FAQ section is updated in last few days with new howto:

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Linux / UNIX Desktop Fun: Let it Snow On Your Desktop

Feeling lonely this holiday season? Try Xsnow. This little app will let is snow on the desktop. Santa and his reindeer will complete your festive season feeling with moving snowflakes on your desktop, with Santa Claus running all over the screen.

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Linux: 20 Iptables Examples For New SysAdmins

Linux comes with a host based firewall called Netfilter. According to the official project site:

netfilter is a set of hooks inside the Linux kernel that allows kernel modules to register callback functions with the network stack. A registered callback function is then called back for every packet that traverses the respective hook within the network stack.

This Linux based firewall is controlled by the program called iptables to handles filtering for IPv4, and ip6tables handles filtering for IPv6. I strongly recommend that you first read our quick tutorial that explains how to configure a host-based firewall called Netfilter (iptables) under CentOS / RHEL / Fedora / Redhat Enterprise Linux. This post list most common iptables solutions required by a new Linux user to secure his or her Linux operating system from intruders.

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Download CentOS 6.1 CD / DVD ISO

CentOS Linux version 6.1 has been released and available for the download. It is a community-supported operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.1. CentOS Linux is considered as the most popular Linux distribution for web servers and general purposes usage.

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Quick Tip: Find Hidden Processes and Ports [ Linux / Unix / Windows ]

Unhide is a little handy forensic tool to find hidden processes and TCP/UDP ports by rootkits / LKMs or by another hidden technique. This tools works under both Linux / Unix, and MS-Windows operating systems. From the man page:

It detects hidden processes using three techniques:

  1. The proc technique consists of comparing /proc with the output of /bin/ps.
  2. The sys technique consists of comparing information gathered from /bin/ps with information gathered from system calls.
  3. The brute technique consists of bruteforcing the all process IDs. This technique is only available on Linux 2.6 kernels.
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HowTo: Linux Update the Adobe Flash Player [ Firefox and Chrome Plugin ]

The Adobe Flash Player plugin is use for viewing multimedia, and streaming video and audio, on a Firefox web browser. The same plugin is used by Google chrome and other browsers. Keeping your third-party plugins such as flash player up to date helps Firefox run safely and smoothly.

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