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To many the online help in Linux offered by the info and man pages will appear terse and cryptic. That's because they act more as a quick reference, than a full tutorial.
The --help option displays a fairly brief list of a command or program's options for many commands or programs, e.g.:
ls --help
The info command will give you help with many of the commands and programs in Linux.
info
Display the main menu.
Info keys
To select a menu option, move the cursor with the cursor keys, and press Enter to select an option.
| Key | Description |
| Enter | select menu option, indicated by a preceding asterix (*) |
| u | up a node (i.e. opposite of Enter) |
| q | quit |
info ls
Display the main info page for the ls command.
info bash
Display the main info page for the bash shell.
Man (manual) pages, unlike info pages, display everything on one page, making them handy to quickly find a command option.
man ls
Display the ls man page.
| Key | Description |
| Down cursor | Down a line. |
| Up cursor | Up a line. |
| Space | Down a screen. |
| b | Back a screen. |
| q | Quit. |
The title and brief description of each man page is stored in a simple database with the one-line format:
title (section) - description
The sections are as follows:
| Section | Topic |
| 1 | Utilities and shell commands. |
| 2 | System calls. |
| 3 | Library calls. |
| 4 | Device and other special files. |
| 5 | File formats. |
| 6 | Games. |
| 7 | Macro packages. |
| 8 | System administration commands. |
| 9 | Kernel routines. |
man 1 -K process
Search all of each section 1 man page (utilities and shell commands) for the string, 'process', and for each match, prompt to view.
whatis ls
Display a brief description of the ls command.
Note:
whatis works by searching the man database for the complete word 'ls' in the title section, and displays the results.
apropos file
Display a list of man pages concerning files.
Note:
apropos works by searching the man database for the string 'file' in the title, section, and description sections, and displays the results.
which cat
Displays any aliases a program (in this case cat) has, followed by where the program is located (by searching your PATH for executable files).
whereis cat
Displays where a program is located, followed by where its man page is located.
When software is installed, documentation other than man and info pages is stored in either the /usr/doc and /usr/share/doc directories. This you can browse from the command-line with the text-only Internet browser, Lynx.
lynx /usr/share/doc
Browse the documentation in the /usr/share/doc directory.
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