Lack of adequate documentation is frequently cited as a shortcoming of open source applications and platforms, but, for the popular choices, there are surprisingly good, free online books available. We round these up on a regular basis here at OStatic, and in this post you'll find five online books that you can jump right into. They introduce basic concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications.

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Top 25 OpenOffice extensions. Here are many good ways to get more out of the open source app suite.

Eyeing Google, Splashtop partners with Yahoo for instant-on web search. It's a pre-emptive strike against Chrome OS.

Open source advocates still called zealots. That's the moniker that a New York Times blog post chooses.

Installing VirtualBox 3.0 on a Fedora 11 desktop. Here's a tutorial that will allow you to run multiple operating systems concurrently.

Open source applications and platforms take regular criticism for not having the same level of documentation as proprietary ones, but for many top open source projects, there are lots of free resources. In some cases these are delivered by the community behind particular projects, and sometimes they are from enthusiasts and other third parties. In this post, you'll find an updated collection of our last tutorials roundup, with over 20 good resources for popular open source applications and Linux. A little time spent working with these resources can pay many dividends.