GNOME includes detailed documentation for the majority of applications, utilities and other components, such as Panel or Nautilus file manager. To view a manual for an application, choose Help menu in the application; to view help about the panel or panel objects, right-click on it and choose Help from the popup menu. This will automatically launch GNOME help browser, Yelp, showing appropriate manual.
You can also start Yelp by choosing Applications ▸ Help. This will show the top-level help system page, listing all GNOME documents conveniently organized by topic.
In addition to the manuals for individual applications, GNOME documentation also includes:
This user guide provides general overview of GNOME and detailed documentation for core GNOME components (desktop, panel, Nautilus, and desktop preferences tools).
This short document gives the minimal necessary information about UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, including such things as filenames, paths and directories, permissions, symbolic links and most confusing of them all, the notion of “mounting”. If you never used UNIX system before, be sure to read this.
Yelp can also be used for viewing non-GNOME documentation, namely man pages and info pages (see below).
In addition to documentation shipped with GNOME, there is also wealth of information available on the Internet. A good starting point is the GNOME website. There you will find instructions for installing GNOME, reviews and tips, developer information, and more.
If you can not find an answer to your question there, you may ask other GNOME users and developers on GNOME mailing list (subscription instructions can be found here). Note, however, that this list is for GNOME-related questions only (do not ask how to configure X Window System, for instance), and it is impolite (to say the least) to ask a question without first checking if this question is already answered in available documents such as GNOME User Guide.
Finally, if you use IRC (Internet Relay Chat), you can find other GNOME users and developers and ask questions on #gnome and #gnome-help channels on irc.gnome.org.
You should realize that GNOME is just part of your computer system. If you want to unleash the full potential of your computer, you need to understand not just GNOME but also the underlying operating system (UNIX/Linux/FreeBSD), various tools and utilities included with it, and its graphics system (X Window System). Each of these components usually comes with its own documentation. Most of UNIX commands and utilities are documented in so-called “manual pages”, or man pages for short. You can view them using Yelp help browser (see Section 10.1 ― GNOME Help System). This documentation is usually very detailed and more technical than most users would like. Another documentation format used by utilities from the GNU project is called “info pages”. They, too, can be viewed using Yelp. Many applications also have documentation in other formats. Sometimes ` it is not easy to find documentation for a given application — try looking in the directories /usr/share/doc and /usr/doc
Documentation for operating system itself varies from one system to another. The best advice is to check the printed manual which came with your system. For Linux, a good source of information is the Linux Documentation Project (LDP); you can read their documentation on the Internet (at http://www.linuxdoc.org). Virtually all Linux distributions also include copies of LDP documents; usually they are found at /usr/share/doc/LDP or /usr/share/doc/HOWTO.
And of course, there is a number of books available about all flavors of UNIX/Linux, GNOME, and about anything else you might be interested in. Check your local bookstore.
If you have found a bug in one of GNOME applications, or have some comments or suggestions regarding GNOME applications or documentation, please let us know! Instructions for submitting bug reports and comments are given in GNOME Feedback Page.