Collected on this CD, you'll find FAQs, HOWTOs, Official Red Hat Linux manuals, and documentation files. In short, this CD contains documentation to help you become better acquainted with your Red Hat Linux system. You can install these indispensable guides on your local system so they're always available, or choose to browse them on the CD to save hard drive space.

You can either read the contents of this CD with your browser, or install the documentation from the supplied RPM packages.

Documents on the CD which you can read with your browser are in the following directories:

• FAQS: Frequently Asked Questions about Linux, system security, and more
• HOWTOS: A vast collection instructional documents on how to accomplish everything from optimizing your hardware under Linux to working with Linux on a laptop. They are available in text, HTML, and PDF formats.
• RH-DOCS: The complete Official Red Hat Linux guides, available in HTML and PDF formats

Packages on the CD, which you can download and install on your local machine, are in the following directories:

• RPMS: Includes translated HOWTOs; the GIMP user's manual (GIMP means GNU Image Manipulation Program); HOWTOs in HTML, text, and PDF; and English HTML and PDF editions of Official Red Hat Linux guides, including the Installation Guide, the Getting Started Guide, the Alpha/SPARC Installation Guide, and the Reference Guide

• SRPMS: Source packages for the above documents (note that if you consider yourself a newbie, you should stick with the documents you'll find in the RPMS directory)

You can install the above packages on your local system from this CD, or you can download the packages using your browser (simultaneously press the [Shift] key and click on the package you want to download).

If you'd like a primer on how to use Gnome-RPM to install the RPMs, please turn to Using Gnome-RPM and RPM (opens in a new window), in the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide, also on this CD. You must be root in order to install packages. If you want to quickly install from the command line, open an Xterm window, change to the directory which holds your package and type rpm -Uvh packagename.rpm. For example, to install the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide, type the following:

# cd /mnt/cdrom/RPMS/
# rpm -Uvh rhl-gsg-6.2en-2.noarch.rpm

The documents will be installed in the /usr/doc directory; to view them, just point your browser to the location on your local machine. If you're going to read the documents from the CD, follow the above links to the HTML versions.

We hope these documents become a trusted resource for you, now and in the future. If you have an Internet connection, be sure to check out the online sites to learn more about Linux and Red Hat Linux.

Thank you for your support of Red Hat Linux!

The Red Hat Documentation Team