Many programs come with some sort of documentation, often in a
file called README or something similar. It is a VERY good idea
to read them with care. It is boring to see (and answer)
questions that are answered in the documentation. Most programs
also have ``man pages''; use the command man
programname to get documentation on a program named
programname. To get help using the man program, use
man man.
Most distributions put other documentation about programs in the directory /usr/doc/; your distribution should include documentation on how to access that documentation.