Appendix A
For More Information

In all likelihood, this book will only be the beginning of your Linux voyage. You’ll find that there’s a sea of Linux information available—both on the Internet and in the print world. Your job will be to keep your head above water as you dive into these resources. Our emphasis here will be on Internet resources, because they are the ones you’ll find most useful.

Internet Resources

Linux is a big topic on the Internet; a recent search on the Alta Vista search engine yielded 200,000 Web pages that mention Linux somewhere. Even when discarding the Web pages created by undergraduates who tinker a little with Linux, you’re left with an amazing number of Web pages that cover Linux in some depth.

We’ve done a little editing for you and compiled this assortment of interesting Linux-related Web pages. Naturally—this being the World Wide Web and all—most of these pages spend a lot of time pointing you to other Web pages, which in turn point you to even more Web pages. Still, by beginning with these pages, you can significantly expand your Linux expertise.

The Linux Documentation Project

http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html

The home page of the Linux Documentation Project is an important source of Linux information and archived software; virtually any aspect of Linux usage and configuration can be found here. This is a page to be placed prominently in your Web browser’s bookmarks list. You can search through the Linux Documentation Archives by connecting to http://sunsite.unc.edu/architext/AT-Linuxquery.html or http://amelia.db.erau.edu/Harvest/brokers/LDP/query.html.

Linux.Org

http://www.Linux.org/

Linux.org is a user-driven group dedicated to—surprise!—Linux.

Walnut Creek CD-ROM

http://www.cdrom.com

This is the online repository of Slackware; you can grab updated versions of Slackware from here.

The Linux Applications and Utilities Page

http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml

Bill Latura maintains this excellent list of Linux applications and utilities. Unlike the Linux Software Map (see below), the applications are listed by category, making it much easier for browsing.

The Linux Software Map

http://www.boutell.com/lsm/

This site attempts to match your software needs with what’s available in the Linux world.

The Linux FAQ

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/linux-faq/

This site contains the most up-to-date version of the Linux Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

The Linux Configuration Page

http://www.hal-pc.org/~davidl/linux/linux.config.html

This page combines installation and configuration tips from a wide variety of users. These are the folks who have successfully installed and configured Linux on a vast assortment of PCs, and if you’re having trouble with Linux on your no-name clone, you may want to check to see if someone else hasn’t already invented that wheel.

The Linux Laptop Page

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/

This page is similar to the Linux Configuration Page; it takes the experiences of many users and condenses them into a very useful guide to installing Linux on a wide variety of machines. Because it’s a little harder to get hardware information about a laptop (i.e., what chipset is used for graphics) and some of the laptop components can be, well, a little fussy (check out the following Web listing), this page is essential for anyone wanting to run Linux on their laptop. Of similar interest is the Linux and X Window on Notebook Computers home page (http://www.castle.net/X-notebook/index_linux.html).

Linux PCMCIA Information

http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/pcmcia/pcmcia.html

Dave Hinds is a virtual god in the Linux community. Why? Because he’s taken on the topic of making Linux work with PCMCIA ports, which are found mostly on laptops. PCMCIA ports are for those credit-card-type adapters (such as Ethernet and modem), and even in the mainstream community PCMCIA support isn’t all it should be. Still, thanks to Hinds’ Card Services for Linux, you can generally make a PCMCIA port work. We’ve included Card Services for Linux on the accompanying slackware CD-ROM; here’s where you can go for more information.

The XFree86 Project

http://www.XFree86.org/

When you installed X Window on your Linux installation, you were really using XFree86, a version of X Window optimized specifically for the Intel architecture. This is the home page of the effort.

If there’s one thing about the Web, it’s always changing. If you want to generate a more current list of Linux-related home pages, check out the Alta Vista Home Page (http://alta.vista.com). Alta Vista is a searchable database of Web pages across the world.

Slackware Mirrors

The Slackware distribution of Linux is maintained at the ftp.cdrom.com site, in /pub/linux/slackware. At this site, you can grab the latest version of Slackware (although you shouldn’t do this too often; you should upgrade in response to specific needs, not just as a general practice).

This is a busy site, however, so you may want to check out a mirror site. A mirror site contains the same Linux files as does the ftp.cdrom.com site, and they’re updated regularly. In addition, as a good Internet citizen you should use the FTP site closest to you, keeping in mind that most of these sites are maintained for the use of local users, not global Internet users. (By the way, ftp.cdrom.com is in California.)

Table A.1 lists the sites known to mirror the Slackware Linux release.

Usenet Newsgroups

The Usenet newsgroups listed in Table A.2 are devoted to the Linux operating system.

Other Linux Implementations

Most Linux users work on a PC—after all, that’s one of the big appeals of Linux. However, Linux has been ported to several other computer architectures, and more efforts are underway. In Table A.3, we list the port and the home page where you can find more information.

Books

This book focused on the Slackware distribution of Linux on the accompanying CD-ROM. Should you wander away from this distribution, you may want to check out alternative sources of Linux information. Also, because this book doesn’t cover the UNIX operating system or the X Window System in any depth (it takes entire forests to cover these topics in any depth), you may want to look for another UNIX/X book or two. The following list should fill most of your needs.

Other Linux Books

Running Linux, Matt Welsh and Lar Kaufman, O’Reilly & Assoc., 1995. This nonspecific Linux primer covers both Linux and some general UNIX commands. It’s not tied to any specific distribution of Linux, so some of the information won’t apply to the accompanying CD-ROMs. Welsh deals with some advanced topics not covered in this book.

Linux Network Administrator’s Guide, Olaf Kirch, SSC, 1994. This technical overview of Linux networking should cover whatever you need to know about Linux on a network. Although this book is written from the viewpoint of a technically sophisticated user, it’s useful for anyone who needs to deal with Linux on the network.

The MIS:Press Slackware Series features other books on Linux topics including: The Linux Database (by Fred Butzen and Dorothy Forbes); The Linux Internet Server (by Kevin Reichard); Linux Programming (by Volkerding, Foster-Johnson, and Reichard); and Linux in Plain English (by Volkerding and Reichard).

UNIX Books

teach yourself . . . UNIX, Third Edition, Kevin Reichard and Eric F. Johnson, MIS:Press, 1995. OK, so we’re biased. This book provides an overview of the UNIX operating system, with topics ranging from system configurations and shell scripts to the Internet. Some computer experience is assumed.

UNIX in Plain English, Second Edition, Kevin Reichard and Eric F. Johnson, MIS:Press, 1994. This book covers the major commands in the UNIX command set—and most of the information should be directly applicable to Linux.

UNIX Fundamentals: The Basics, Kevin Reichard, MIS:Press, 1994. This book is for the true UNIX neophyte, who knows little or nothing about UNIX—or computing, for that matter. It’s part of a four-book series covering UNIX fundamentals (the other titles are UNIX Fundamentals: UNIX for DOS and Windows Users; UNIX Fundamentals: Communications and Networking; and UNIX Fundamentals: Shareware and Freeware).

Programming Books

Al Stevens Teaches C, Al Stevens, MIS:Press, 1994. Provides a beginner’s introduction to C programming and goes far beyond the brief introduction found in Chapter 10.

Graphical Applications with Tcl and Tk, Eric F. Johnson, M&T Books, 1996. This book covers Tcl scripting on UNIX, Linux,. and Windows. You can create a lot of neat applications with very little effort using Tcl.

Cross-Platform Perl, Eric F. Johnson, M&T Books, 1996. While the syntax may appear to have come from someone who’s possessed, Perl provides many useful capabilities for system administrators and Web page developers.

X Window Books

The UNIX System Administrator’s Guide to X, Eric F. Johnson and Kevin Reichard, M&T Books, 1994. This books focuses on topics related to UNIX and X, including configuration and usage. There’s also some information about XFree86. An accompanying CD-ROM contains all the UNIX/X freeware detailed in the book.

Using X, Eric F. Johnson and Kevin Reichard, MIS:Press, 1992. This book covers X from the user’s point of view, covering both usage and configuration issues.

Motif Books

Power Programming Motif, Eric F. Johnson and Kevin Reichard, M&T Books, 1994. This second edition covers OSF/Motif programming through version 1.2.

PC Configuration Books

IRQ, DMA & I/O: Resolving and Preventing PC System Conflicts, Jim Aspinwall, MIS:Press, 1995 (second edition in preparation).

Magazines

If you’re at all serious about your Linux usage, you’ll want to check out Linux Journal (SSC, 8618 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115-3097; (206) 782-7733; $19 per year; http://www.ssc.com; subs@ssc.com). This monthly magazine covers the Linux scene, offering practical tips and profiles of the many interesting people in the Linux community.

The number of UNIX-specific magazines has fallen in recent years (a trend, admittedly, that baffles us). UNIX Review is our favorite, if only because two-thirds of the writing team contribute a monthly X Window column.

OSF/Motif and Linux

OSF/Motif, as licensed from the Open Software Foundation, is commercial software. OSF/Motif is actually many things, including a style guide, a window manager, and a set of programming libraries.

Because OSF/Motif is licensed commercial software, it’s not included on the accompanying CD-ROMs. (Because OSF/Motif is beginning to be a prerequisite for any serious commercial UNIX development, you may at some time need to find OSF/Motif for your Linux system, if you’re looking at any professional installations).

MetroLink (4711 N. Powerline Rd., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309; (305) 938-0283; http://www.metrolink.com; sales@metrolink.com) offers OSF/Motif for Linux.

Linux HOWTO

The collective wisdom of the Linux community has been distilled into a series of text documents, called HOWTO, that describe various portions of the Linux operating system. We’ve included the latest version of these documents on the first accompanying CD-ROM (in the /docs directory), but if they don’t answer your questions, you may want to see if a more recent version is available via the Internet. You can find them in many sites, but the official repository of these documents is at sunsite.unc.edu, in the /pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO directory.