I'm a new *frustrated* linux user and I'm getting tired of switching back to windows to search google whenever I have problems under linux (which, in fact, is just about every few minutes). I know there are man pages, but for someone who has just installed Linux they're not so easy to find or use. To me it looks like the man pages are in some kind of archive and when I open the archive I see files with extensions like .1 What is that about? Do they need to be installed, or am I viewing them wrong?

My original problem was with installing ndiswrapper, but every step I take brings me two steps back. I'm trying to find out how to make a link to the kernel source inside /lib/modules/VERSION/build so the ndiswrapper installation wont give me errors anymore. I looked in the directory called VERSION and there's an icon labeled "build" but apparently it no longer exists, according to Linux when I try to open it. If it doesn't exist, why do I see it? Is my computer haunted with ghost files? Anyway, I'm about to try entering this at the konsole because google told me to:

ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /lib/modules/VERSION/build

But I guarantee there will be some kind of problem. There always is. Linux hates me.

I'm using the Slackware distribution, by the way.

MAN help pages confuse me more than anything else because there are no examples like what a web tutorial within the O/S can do for you.

You can check out the WIKI and Tutorial sections here which have howto's for networking.

I suggest also to download The Linux Documentation Project's HOWTO which has thousands of html's on just about everything you wanted to know about Linux and the config, etc.

You don't have to find man pages. If you need help on the ln command just type this:
man ln
If that doesn't work then you don't have the man pages installed properly. Download the man package and use pkgtool to install.
If all else fails:
http://www.linuxcommand.org/superman_pages.php



The ln command you should be using:
ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /lib/modules/2.4.20/build

Here are a couple of tips for using man-pages.
First of all, you normally view them by using the 'man' command will typing in the console. So you could type 'man fstab' to learn about how to add entries to the 'fstab'.

If you use KDE, you can enter 'man:<topic>' in either the Konqueror web browser's address bar, or in the application launcher. This will give you a weballized version of the man page. The same is true for info pages. For example "info:bash" will get you a manual for using bash, that you browser in the Konqueror web browser. You need to have 'Konqueror' be your default browser to do this in the applicaiton launcher.

Suppose you want a formatted printed version of a man page.
man -Tps bash
will give you a postscript file of the 'bash' man-page that you can print out our view in kghostview. 'man -Tdvi bash' will give you the same thing but with a .dvi file that you can preview or print from kdvi.

There is a website called The Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org) that has a wide mix of How-to's, manuals, and links to online magazines. Also your distro probably has loads of documentation that you can install also. These packages probably have the letters 'doc' in the name.

You might try looking for html manuals already installed on your computer. Try the command 'find /usr -iname 'index.html' to find some of them.