Linux / *BSD resources

There are many web sites and newsgroups containing resources about Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and free / open source software in general: here are some sites divided in categories.

The first resources available are the ones you can find on the site of the distribution you installed or you want to install. The most important distributions are: Red Hat, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu and Slackware but there are a lot of more distributions, each one with its own site so you may have a look at DistroWatch, a site containing a lot of updated information about the various distributions.

If you want to find resources about the various components of Linux distributions you can go to sites dedicated to the kernel and to the graphic server X.Org or XFree86.

A free-to-download guide to the basics of command line use and shell scripting, on many common programs used on the command line, as well as more advanced topics is The Linux Command Line.

You can find specific informations concerning Linux installation on laptops on Linux on Laptops and TuxMobil.

If you want to read updated news about free / open source software you can find them on Slashdot, Linux today and LXer. You can find the latest news on these and other sites on  LinuxLeak.

If you can't find the information you need in any site or if you simply want to get in touch with other Linux users around the world you can read the newsgroup dedicated to Linux: the international comp.os.linux.* hierarchy contains various newsgroups.

The international comp.unix.bsd.* hierarchy contains various newsgroups dedicated to the main *BSD operating systems.

There are also a lot of Linux and *BSD newsgroups in various languages so you can look in your nations newsgroups hierarchy to find them.

Three sites containing a lot of Linux programs are Freshmeat, LinuxBerg and TuxSoftware.

Games players must go to LinuxGames and The Linux Game Tome to discover the latest news about Linux games, download new games and updates.

To find information about the main *BSD family operating sistems you can look for on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD sites. Besides carrying information about Linux, DistroWatch offers a lot of resources about the various *BSDs.

Besides Linux and the various *BSDs there are other less famous (at least for now) operating systems such as:

• ReactOS, a Windows open source clone
• Haiku a project inspired by BeOS

Security problems under Linux and the various *BSDs are the main theme on LinuxSecurity.

There are various softwares to create a virtual machine under Linux or a *BSD, each one with its own features. News and informations about the major ones can be found on their home sites: bochs, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware and Xen.

If you enjoy images of Tux in its most curious variations you can appreciate Tux Factory and TuxAlito gallery.

Comic fans can look for the daily strip on UserFriendly.