Getting Started with Linux

What is Linux?
Linux is an open source operating system based off of Unix.

Ubuntu
Suggested starting points for newbies/beginners
 * Quick start guide for dummies
 * How to install anything! (a bit more advanced)

Links

 * Ubuntu Homepage
 * Ubuntu Forums

Description
Gentoo is one of the more complicated distributions to install and work with. Gentoo is designed to be extremely configureable, allowing it to be run on almost any system while requiring a fair amount of configuration on the user's part. Gentoo's package management system, portage, has the ability to build packages from source code automatically, allowing the user to determine compile options such as the cpu architecture. Although Gentoo takes more work to set up, documentation is in general very good and there is a very knowledgeable community to help resolve issues.

Links

 * Gentoo Homepage
 * Gentoo Forums
 * Gentoo Wiki
 * Gentoo Portage Homepage

Office

 * Open Office - A very popular Microsoft Office replacement application that features support for Microsoft Office file types.
 * Abiword - Free Software word processor licensed under the GNU General Public License.
 * Koffice - Office suite for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). All its components have been released under free software/open source licenses.

Internet

 * Pidgin - Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a popular multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many commonly used instant messaging protocols.
 * Firefox - Free, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
 * Thunderbird - Free, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
 * Azureus - Most popular BitTorrent client which is cross platform and open source.
 * GFTP - Free/open source multithreaded FTP client.

Graphical

 * Inkscape - A vector graphics editor application.
 * Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics.

Multimedia

 * Mplayer - An advanced media player that has support for almost every video codec.
 * Xine - A media player that supports DVD menus
 * VLC
 * MythTV - A program that can turn any PC with video capture card into a PVR sytem. It has many advanced features for timeshifting and scheduling recordings.  It also has a number of plugins allowing it to be a frontend for emulators, music, videos, DVDs, etc.

Games

 * Enemy Territory - A game created to be the expansionpack to the 1st person shooter Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Only the multiplayer was completed and you can download it free from many websites.
 * Tux Racer
 * Freeciv - A Civilization I/II clone with network play and AI
 * ZSNES - A popular Super Nintendo emulator available for many operating systems.
 * MAME

Text Editors

 * VI - A screen-oriented text editor computer program
 * VIM
 * EMACS
 * NANO
 * PICO
 * KATE - A gui based text editor for KDE. It has many usefull features such as a syntax coloring, built in console and built in file browser to make it easier to build programs and webpages.

Emulation

 * WINE - Project which aims to allow a PC with an x86 architecture processor running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows.
 * Cedega - Fork of WINE which is designed specifically for running games written for Microsoft Windows under Linux.

Virtual Machines

 * VMWare - Allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual computers and to use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system. Each virtual machine instance can execute its own guest operating system, such as (but not limited to) Windows, Linux, and BSD variants.

Forums
freshmeat

sourceforge

Local User Groups

 * Facebook group for the Binghamton based Linux Users Group (open membership - join us!)
 * http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~lug/ - BU Linux User Group Web Page (not too current), listservs were moderately active for a time
 * STNYLug: http://www.stnylug.org - Southern Tier Linux User Group - meets regularly, every month

Guides
Local Basic Unix and Linux, Dual Booting Advice, Kernel Hacking, Doing Installations and Maintenance, Web Server Administration X for Annoyed Dummies

Other wikis

Resources
http://www.linuxcommand.org/

http://www.howtoforge.com/taxonomy_menu/1/1

A tutorial for beginners at Linux.org (using Debian)