Does anyone know a good source for a desktop/users guide to linux? The linux documentation project has a users guide but it is way out of date (1996). I was wondering if there was a good source for concise answers to problems commonly encountered by users of linux on the desktop, like Why don't I have sound? Why is my network card not working? How can I change my screen resolution? How do I transfer files to my <insert external USB/firewire device here>? How do I set up my printer?

I realize that answers to some questions may be dependent on the distribution and/or desktop environment you are using.

I think you answered the question yourself. Look into the Doc's of your distro. Go to the website of your distro and start browsing.

tldp is Linux HOW-TO "in general." They are not specific to your distro. It wouldn't make sense to do that anyway. If some doc's on tldp are dated back to 96 then they are usually still good. If they weren't then they would have updated/removed them.

Hi,
I just found this site.

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

mike

mikezieg8@ispwest.com

mikezieg8,

Thanks for the site. It looks like there is a lot of useful info there.

Nezzo,

I guess I should be more clear as to what I am asking. If you use Mandrake, you can use "draksound" to configure sound cards, but if you click on "troubleshooting", you get this:

The classic bug sound tester is to run the following commands:

- "lspcidrake -v | fgrep AUDIO" will tell you which driver your card use by default
- "grep sound-slot /etc/modules.conf" will tell you what driver it currently uses
- "/sbin/lsmod" will enable you to check if its module (driver) is loaded or not
- "/sbin/chkconfig --list sound" and "/sbin/chkconfig --list alsa" will tell you if sound and alsa services're configured to be run on initlevel 3
- "aumix -q" will tell you if the sound volume is muted or not
- "/sbin/fuser -v /dev/dsp" will tell which program uses the sound card.

I think the above is great in helping a user in getting to the bottom of a problem. What I'm wondering is if there are similar "troubleshooting" steps that are put together for networking, display, external storage, etc. If something like that could be put together in one place, it would be very helpful for a desktop user (like myself).

I found some useful guides:

http://cafecomputer.com/guide/users-guide.en.html
(Debian-specific, not finished)

http://www.linuxbasis.com/howtos.html
(collection of many user-related guides)

The Debian guide is close to what I was looking for. The user's guide that comes with Mandrake is good too. Just thought I'd post these to anyone else who may read this thread.