In addition to man pages,
there's some other helpful options that are built
into Linux to help you when you need assistance.
The first one we're going to cover is known as apropos,
which is the Linux commands that are used
to search the name section of all of the man pages
for a given keyword that you provide.
It's going to be especially useful when you'd like
to perform some tasks, but you forgot the name
of the exact command you might need to use.
Another handy command is known as whatis.
Whatis is going to be used to display a brief description
of a given command, including commands that may appear
in multiple sections of the man pages.
Another command we have is known as info.
The command info is going to be used
to display the info page of a command.
It is generally an alternative to a man page,
but they're not as widely adopted as man pages.
Personally, I much prefer a man page
because man pages contain all the information
you need in a single page.
Info pages, on the other hand, have more structure,
and they can be composed of multiple pages
interconnected through links but again,
I'm just a bit more old-school,
and I grew up where man pages were the dominant thing.
So this tends to be where I default
to when I need to learn more
about a particular Linux command,
but some newer people like to use the info pages too.
Another quick way to get information
on a command is to type it as --help
or -h after the command's name.
For example, you might type in man -h
and get help on the man pages.
Note though, this isn't going to work for all commands.
The command has to support this help function
for you to be able to use this method.
If you want to try it out, just go ahead
and type man -h or man --help, and it'll show you
a brief list of how to use the man command,
but if you try to do this with something
like the copy command, by typing cp -h
or cp --help, you're going to get an error message.
Another place to look for assistance is
the /user/share/doc directory
because it contains a directory
with all of the documentation files
for the libraries, system utilities
and other software packages that are installed
on your particular Linux system.
Now, aside from within the system,
you can also go online to find some helpful information.
The internet is filled
with helpful Linux documentation based
on what type of help you're actually looking for.
Official distro documentation will include the release notes
of different versions and updates, an installation guide,
a virtualization guide and much more.
For example, the official documentation
for Ubuntu is available at help.ubuntu.com.
The Linux Documentation Project is another
great resource online you can use.
You can find this at tldp.org.
This is an all-volunteer project that provides
a comprehensive resource for Linux documentation
and includes step by step procedures
for performing certain tasks inside of Linux.
It also has FAQs and, of course,
a copy of all the man pages.
If you need to learn more about one of the core utilities,
something like move or copy or remove or something else
like that, you can always visit the GNU Coreutils Manual.
This is the official source of documentation
for the GNU Core Utilities.
This is available at www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual.
Now, while searching through the documentation is
an essential skill, for a Linux certified professional,
sometimes there's going to be instances where
online documentation is not going to be the best source
for finding answers to your specific Linux questions,
especially if those questions are complex
and may need to be answered
by interacting with other people.
In these cases, you may want to go and get interactive help
with somebody online by using something
like a Usenet newsgroup, a mailing list,
a Q&A website, a forum or even social media.
Usenet newsgroups are an online discussion repository
similar to the old-school bulletin board systems
we used to grow up with, and these are some
of the oldest forms of internet-based discussions online.
Users post text or files to a newsgroup,
and other members of the group can view
or respond to those posts, which are organized
in a threaded manner.
Newsgroups tend to be focused
on specific subject matter as well.
For example, you can subscribe
to a newsgroup that's centered
on a specific Linux distribution
or just one for embedded Linux systems
or maybe one that's just focused on Linux security.
There are many of these Usenet newsgroups out there
for you to join if you're interested in that kind of thing.
Another option is joining an internet-based mailing list,
which is similar to a newsgroup
in that they involve threaded discussions
among members of a specific community.
These posts, though, are essentially email messages
that are going to be sent to every user on a distribution list.
You can find distro-specific mailing lists
for several major distros, or you can subscribe
to a more general Linux mailing list.
Fair warning though, you're going to find yourself drowning
in emails if you join a busy mailing list.
So you need to make sure you set up
some filtering rules to your inbox to put
those messages directly into a sub-folder,
so you don't miss an important email from your boss.
Now, Q&A or question and answer websites
are another good option.
These Q&A sites enable users to post a question
on some topic, and other users can answer
or otherwise comment on that question.
Many of these sites have a functionality for users to like
or up-vote questions that they feel are extremely useful
or to select an answer as the best solution.
The most popular Q&A site for this is known
as Stack Exchange, which has a Unix
and Linux category available at unix.stackexchange.com.
Now, Reddit is another great example of a Q&A website,
and you can find the Linux part at reddit.com/r/linux.
Internet forums are another form
of social knowledge sharing, and these typically
use threaded posts, similar to newsgroups or mailing lists,
but they're using web protocols to deliver that content.
Some forums encourage users to post questions
to the community, and other users will then respond
to those posts with guidance.
There are distro-specific forums
and general Linux forums as well,
depending on which one you want to join.
Personally, I find that LinuxQuestions is a great forum
and is quite popular for Linux support.
You can find it at www.linuxquestions.org.