Much of the details on how to use and exploit further the software available is available as online documentation on the system itself. The online documentation is available in two types, the Help from the Main Menu and/or applications and the text-based Unix-style man and info commands.
Desktop Help
The Desktop Help can be invoked from the Main Menu,
Main Menu --> Help
Invoking this will display the screen below.
Click to view screen shot Fig 13.1 GNOME Help Screen.
The Help content is divided into several main categories. So you will need to select the appropriate category to view the help content of interest. Most of the information on how to use the Desktop can be found from the Help here. For example, to view the help information on the File Manage, select,
Desktop --> Nautilus File Manager
Click to view screen shot Fig 13.2 File Manager Help Screen
Help Selection in Applications
Most of the Desktop applications have a Help button in their main menubar at the top. Selecting this will give you more information on how to use the application. The Help screen for the OpenOffice.org Writer application is displayed below.
Click to view screen shot Fig 13.3 OpenOffice.org Writer Help Screen
Man and Info Pages
As discussed in Chapter 11, from the command line interface using a Shell, it is possible to access a comprehensive help system on the commands available via the man and info commands. For example, to find out more on how to use the directory listing command, ls, open up a shell (see Chapter 11) and at the command prompt enter,
$ man ls
More detailed information on certain commands may be found using the info command, e.g.
$ info ls
To learn how to use the man and info commands, make use of these commands themselves e.g.
$ man info
$ man man
$ info info
$ info man
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Getting More Info And Help
1. Electronic Documentation
2. The Internet (WWW)
