I feel overwhelmed by the amount of free material that is available for learning Linux. Thosunds of free books, videos, and podcasts are waiting for people who are thirsty to learn about Linux. A couple of hours ago I found this post by Linux 101 Hacks‘ author, Ramesh Natarajan, informing us that his nifty little Book is available for online reading. I’ve read some of the hacks and found them very interesting and informative. I’m sure you will get a kick out of reading this book.

I’d like to write a quick post about an interesting concept that I’ve just stumbled across. If you are a beginner in Linux world and you are starved for good reading materials to learn open source and free softwares, there is a website for that. Floss Manuals is a collection of manuals about free and open source softwares. Currently, I’m reading one of their manuals about Ardour, the free DAW software that has gained momentum recently, and I tell you it rocks. The writing style is clean and they use high quality graphics to illustrate the concepts. Truth to be told, I’m actually got inspired to write my posts in this way! You can read more about Floss Manuals in their About page.

Ubuntu is free, not only free of charge but also free to be studied, changed, and redistributed. The question is, however, where does this freedom come from? We all know the answer – open source and the free software movement. However most beginners have little clue about the origin of the free software movement and the story of Ricahrd Stallman.

Honestly, It’s been a while that I wanted to study open source and the philosophy behind it. Today I stumbled across a book called Free as in Freedom written by Sam Williams. I read the first chapter and it seemed to be a very absorbing book. It essentially tells the story of RMS and how he came across the idea of free software.

If you are interested to read this book, you can read the free online version here.