Concepts Glossary 152 Getting Started Guide man Command Linux systems come with a great deal of online documentation. One resource that is always available when you are working at a command line interface is the manual pages, referred to as man pages. To learn about any Linux command, view the man page for that command. For example, to view the man page for the ls command, enter this command: man ls The man pages can be difficult to work with because they contain all of the possi- ble options for a command, and rarely show any examples, but they provide a resource that is always available. See also info. Mounting filesystem devices In order to use filesystem devices such as a floppy diskette or CD-ROM drive, you must indicate to the Linux operating system where to access them as part of the root (main) filesystem. You can do this using the mount command. (Floppy disks and CD-ROMs are also automounted in OpenLinux, so you can access them from /auto/floppy and /auto/cdrom, respectively.) See also Filesystems. Multitasking Linux is a fully multitasking operating system. This means that the operating sys- tem can execute many programs at the same time, including running several pro- grams for each user who is logged in to the Linux system over a network connection. Each program that Linux is running is normally called a process. Multitasking actually uses the kernel of the operating system to switch between many processes so quickly that they all appear to execute at the same time. In truth, the more applications are running on the same computer, the slower all of the applications will run. In most cases, Linux can handle hundreds of simulta- neous applications. When you first boot OpenLinux, many programs are already running in the back- ground. After you log in with a valid username and password, you can start other programs by entering commands or choosing icons and menu items. Each of these programs runs independently of all others. If one program crashes, it typi-