Lesson 1.11: Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc

Here are the three documentation sets:

Man pages
Info pages
/usr/share/docs

The Man Page

man ls

What can you discover via the man pages?

The command's summary
Options and explanations
Examples
Author and maintainer

Search Capabilities of man page

Man pages include a powerful set of search capabilities to help you find exactly what you need.
Once the man page is displayed, type a forward slash / to enable keyword searching.
Simply enter the word you're looking for after the slash and select Enter.
Use the n and N keys to find the next or previous example of the keyword.
Use Ctrl+C to end the search.

Organization of man page

Man pages are organized into the following sections:

User commands (section 1)
System calls (section 2)
C library functions (section 3)
Devices and special files (section 4)
File formats and conventions (section 5)
Games (section 6)
Miscellanea (section 7)
System administration tools and daemons (section 8)

Keys used in man page (manual page)

Up, down arrow key to navigate upwards and downwards.
G to jump to the bottom of the page.
g to jump to the top of the page.
q to quit or exit from man page.
/text to search a text (Forward Search : Top --> Bottom)
?text to search a text (Reverse Search : Bottom --> Top)
n to locate next occurance of the searched text
N to locate next occurance of the searched text in reverse direction

The info command

The info pages play a similar role to man pages, though they tend to be a little more user-friendly. The man pages are basically a short, terse reference, while info pages tend more toward readability and deeper explanations. The info page system also supports basic linking between documents for easier cross-referencing. This provides a more structured and readable documentation set.

info ls

Files in /usr/share/doc

[sanjeeb@server ~]$ ls /usr/share/doc/
abattis-cantarell-fonts        gsound                        libssh                          php-common
accountsservice                gstreamer1                    libstemmer                      php-fpm
adcli                          gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free   libstoragemgmt                  pigz
adobe-mappings-cmap            gstreamer1-plugins-base       libtasn1                        pinentry
adobe-mappings-pdf             gstreamer1-plugins-good       libthai                         pinfo
adobe-source-code-pro-fonts    gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free  libtheora                       pipewire
alsa-lib                       gtk3                          libtiff                         pipewire-libs
alsa-utils                     gtk4                          libtirpc                        pixman
appstream                      gtkmm30                       libtraceevent-doc               pkgconf
...                             ...                             ...                         ...

[sanjeeb@server ~]$ ls /usr/share/doc/bzip2
CHANGES  LICENSE  README
 
[sanjeeb@server ~]$ cat /usr/share/doc/bzip2/README