Linuxtopia: Over 100 Free Books & Tutorials for FOSS Apps/Platforms

One of the chicken-and-egg problems that keeps some users from trying out and becoming skilled at good open source applications is lack of adequate documentation. How are you supposed to learn effectively without it? The good news is that for a whole lot of open source applications and operating systems, there are good, free books you can get online. We've covered these for the powerful Blender 3D graphics and animation app, for Ubuntu, for Linux hacks, and for the GIMP (graphics). We've also covered FLOSS Manuals, which free documentation for many open source applications. In addition to these, one of the best online sources for free books and tutorials is Linuxtopia.

While its focus is on books and tutorials for Linux, Linuxtopia offers instructional materials for other platforms as well. Some of the guides are richer and better than others, but there are hundreds of them available, and you can find a lot of excellent ones.

You can find a very good guide to CGI Programming on the Web, Xen virtualization,  a Microsoft Office to OpenOffice migration guide, a very good HTML tutorial, and PHP lessons.

Linux users will find general guides for beginners, and much more advanced titles, such as Linux virtualization guides.

 It's worth taking a look at Linuxtopia, and if you're interested in more open source tutorials and resources, see our guide to over 30 good choices.