Chapter 1. The hacktive media
dyne:bolic GNU/Linux is a live bootable distribution working directly from the CD without the need to install or change anything on harddisk. It can recognize most of your hardware devices and offers a vast range of softwares for sound and video production, streaming, 3d modeling, peer to peer and filesharing, deejaying, veejaying and more.
This operating system focuses on providing multimedia functionalities to surf, stream, record, edit, encode and broadcast both sound and video; it also overcomes usual installation problems by providing an easy way to run from harddisk without repartitioning, but just copying a directory (docking), thus avoiding any risk of data loss and preserving the integrity of other systems you are already using.
dyne:bolic it is made by and shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives to stimulate the production and not only the fruition of digital and analog informations. Empowered by GNU/Linux and the groovy open source software community, this operating system takes birth as a grassroot effort to spread free software and the spirit of sharing informations.
The latest version of this document is made available online at the address dynebolic.org/manual and in printable format at dynebolic.org/dynebolic-manual.pdf. For more informations visit the homepage on dynebolic.org where more online documentation is made available. To contribute you can report bugs and get in touch with the community of users and developers joining the the discussion mailinglists or the irc.freenode.net #dyne chat channel.
How to use this manual
Far from being complete in exploring the possibilities of each single software, you'll get introduced and find basic directions on how to use, modify and employ dynebolic in various circumstances.
When in need of in-deep information on how to operate a particular software, you should consult the included man pages.
The manpage is the name of the manual page describing usage of the program, you can use it with the man command from an XTerminal inside dyne:bolic :
[d:b] ~ # man hasciicam [Enter]it will show an higly informative text about the usage of the program; the manpage name usually matches the name of the program executable itself.
Always keep in mind: the man command is your friend :) it works in every GNU/Linux system providing information about every command, and with all the commands that are around there is a lot to discover! for example have a look at manuals like "sox" or "convert", you'll find out that you can do a lot of things just from the XTerminal commandline!
At last, in case you are using intensively a certain software for your purposes, don't miss to consult its own documentation and join the community of users around it: there you can discover more about its usage and development.