on public mailing lists, forums, wikis, and other Internet venues (provided you ask politely and
aren't too annoying).
Linux User Groups (LUGs) have sprung up all over the world. Many LUGs sponsor Linux installfests
(where members help you install the Linux of your choice on your computer) or help nonprofit
groups and schools use Linux on older computers that will no longer support the latest Microsoft
Windows software. The LUG I'm a member of holds monthly meetings with talks on Linux topics
and has an active Web site, mailing list, and chat server where members can help one another with
Linux questions that come up.
Free online bulletin board services have sprung up to get information on specific Linux topics. Popular
general Linux forums are available from
www·LinuxQuestions·org
,
www·LinuxForums·org
,
and
www·LinuxHelp·net
.
Communities also gather around specific software projects and Linux distributions. SourceForge
(
http://sourceforge·net/
) is home to thousands of open source software projects. Go to
the SourceForge·net site and try keyword searches for topics that interest you (for example, image
gallery or video editing). Each project provides links to project home pages, forums, and software
download sites. There are always projects looking for people to help write code or documentation
or just participate in discussions.
You'll find that most major Linux distributions have associated mailing lists and forums. You can go
directly to the Web sites for the Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Linux (
http://fedoraproject·org/
),
Debian (
www·debian·com
), Ubuntu (
http://ubuntuforums·org
), Gentoo (
www·gentoo·org
),
and others to learn how to participate in forums and contribute to those projects.
Major Software Projects
Some software projects have grown beyond the status of being simply a component of Linux or
some other UNIX derivative. Some of these projects are sponsored and maintained by organizations
that oversee multiple open source projects. The most popular open source projects and organiza-
tions include the following:
The Apache Software Foundation (
www·apache·org
) is not only the world's most
popular open source Web server software, it's the most popular of all Web server software.
Most Linux distributions that contain server software include Apache. The Apache
Software Foundation maintains the Apache Web (HTTP) server and about a dozen other
projects, including SpamAssassin (for blocking and filtering e-mail spam), Apache Portals
(to provide portal software), and a bunch of projects for producing modules to use with
your Apache Web server.
The Internet Systems Consortium (
www·isc·org
) supports critical Internet infrastruc-
ture projects under open source licenses. Those projects include Bind (DNS server soft-
ware), DHCP (to assign IP addresses and other information to Internet clients), INN (for
creating Internet news servers), and OpenReg (a tool for managing delegation of domains
in a shared registry).
19
Starting with Linux
1
