This page is not intended to be a one stop shop for all Linux tutorials or "How to run Linux". First off, I'm not an expert by any means, and secondly that's what the Linux Documentation Project is for. This is more a place to find little known tips or things that I found really useful to know that the beggining Linux user might not know.

First one, mounting stuff. I won't get into how to figure out how Linux names the partitions or what mounting is, but here is the command to mount a Windows 98/95 partion on something.
mount -t vfat /dev/whateverhd /whateverdirectory
Replace "whateverhd" with the partition, and "whateverdirecotry" with the directory you want to mount it under. You can mount it anywhere, but most people put it under /mnt/disk.

Alias are cool. They are major shortcuts you can use when you use the command prompt. Let's say you don't like to type "cd .." to move up one directory. You can create an alias of "cu" that will do that for you when you type "cu". How you do that is this:
Go to /etc and type "pico bashrc"
Then go the very bottom of the file, start a new line, and type alias cu='cd ..
Then hit ctrl-o to save it, and ctrl-x to exit.
Now, when you type "cu" it will move you up one level. Neat huh? You can do this with just about any command. So I made one that had "rm" aliased to "rm -i" so that when I hit "rm" it asked me if I was sure I wanted to delete the file.

You can change the way your command prompt looks by chaning the "PS1" settings.
Go to /etc and type "pico bashrc"
You will see a line that starts with "PS1=". Now replace that line with your predetermined PS1 settings. A tutorial to help you find out what those settings should be can be found here.

You can create a neat screen capture of your Linux desktop to show your Windows only friends what it looks like. Just start up "The Gimp" (which should have been automatically installed when you installed a default Linux install) and go to "Xtns" and select "Screen Shot". Then just play around with the options and hit "Grab". Boom, instant screen shot.

One of the really annoying things about Linux is permissions. If you ever encounter an error saying you don't have permission to do something, try hitting ls -l and seeing if you own the file or if "root" does. If root owns it, but you're the one who uses it, su to root, and type chown yourname thefilename and chgrp yourgroup(usuallyyourname) thefilename. Now you can access and write to the file like normal. Or, if something won't execute, even though you know it should, try typing chmod u+x filename and see if that doesn't work. The "u+x" part is saying let the user (you, or the name it says in the first column when you hit ls -l) exucute (x) the file. Here is a listing of what a command like that means: "u"=user, "g"=group, "o"=other, "a"=all (user, group and other). "+"=add and "-"=take away. And finally "r"=you can read the file, "w"=you can write to the file, and "x"=you can execute the file. So the command chmod g-wx myreallycoolproject.html would not let the group that owns that file (found out by looking in the second column when you hit ls -l) write to it, or execute it, but would still let them read it. Once you get the hang of permissions, it becomes easier, but I still hate them.

A neat little thing that lets you block anoying ads is adding the adserver to your hosts file.
First, go to /etc and type in pico hosts
Go the last line, hit enter, and type in 127.0.0.1 adsevername
Then hit ctrl-o to save, and ctrl-x to exit.
Now when you go to a site that uses that adsever, the ads won't show up. Some good ones you can try are adforce.imgis.com, ad.doubleclick.net and ads.msn.com. Prove it to yourself, before you add them to your hosts file, go to Dilbert.com and you'll see a bunch of adds. Add the ad.doubleclick.net server to your hosts file, and go back to dilbert. Now the ads will be gone!