openSUSE® Leap comes with various sources of information and documentation, many of which are already integrated into your installed system.
/usr/share/doc
This traditional help directory holds various documentation files and
release notes for your system. It contains also information of
installed packages in the subdirectory packages
.
Find more detailed information in
Section 15.1, “Documentation Directory”.
When working with the shell, you do not need to know the options of the commands by heart. Traditionally, the shell provides integrated help by means of man pages and info pages. Read more in Section 15.2, “Man Pages” and Section 15.3, “Info Pages”.
The help center of the GNOME desktop (Help) provides central access to the most important documentation resources on your system in searchable form. These resources include online help for installed applications, man pages, info pages, and the SUSE manuals delivered with your product.
When installing new software with YaST, the software documentation is installed automatically (in most cases) and usually appears in the help center of your desktop. However, some applications, such as GIMP, may have different online help packages that can be installed separately with YaST and do not integrate into the help centers.
The traditional directory to find documentation on your
installed Linux system is /usr/share/doc
. Usually,
the directory contains information about the packages installed on your
system, plus release notes, manuals, and more.
In the Linux world, many manuals and other kinds of documentation are
available in the form of packages, like software. How much and which
information you find in /usr/share/docs
also
depends on the (documentation) packages installed. If you cannot find
the subdirectories mentioned here, check if the respective packages are
installed on your system and add them with YaST, if needed.
We provide HTML and PDF versions of our books in different
languages. In the manual
subdirectory, find HTML
versions of most of the SUSE manuals available for your product.
For an overview of all documentation available for your product refer to
the preface of the manuals.
If more than one language is installed,
/usr/share/doc/manual
may contain different
language versions of the manuals. The HTML versions of the SUSE
manuals are also available in the help center of both desktops. For
information on where to find the PDF and HTML versions of the books on
your installation media, refer to the openSUSE Leap Release Notes.
They are available on your installed system under
/usr/share/doc/release-notes/
or online at your
product-specific Web page at
http://www.suse.com/doc/.
Under packages
, find the documentation
that is included in the software packages installed on your system. For
every package, a subdirectory
/usr/share/doc/packages/packagename
is created. It often contains README files for the package and sometimes
examples, configuration files, or additional scripts. The following list
introduces typical files to be found under
/usr/share/doc/packages
. None of these entries are
mandatory and many packages might only include a few of them.
AUTHORS
List of the main developers.
BUGS
Known bugs or malfunctions. Might also contain a link to a Bugzilla Web page where you can search all bugs.
CHANGES
, ChangeLog
Summary of changes from version to version. Usually interesting for developers, because it is very detailed.
COPYING
, LICENSE
Licensing information.
FAQ
Question and answers collected from mailing lists or newsgroups.
INSTALL
How to install this package on your system. As the package is already installed by the time you get to read this file, you can safely ignore the contents of this file.
README
, README.*
General information on the software. For example, for what purpose and how to use it.
TODO
Things that are not implemented yet, but probably will be in the future.
MANIFEST
List of files with a brief summary.
NEWS
Description of what is new in this version.
Man pages are an essential part of any Linux system. They explain the
usage of a command and all available options and parameters. Man pages
can be accessed with man
followed by the name of the
command, for example, man ls
.
Man pages are displayed directly in the shell. To navigate them, move up
and down with Page ↑ and
Page ↓. Move between the beginning and the end of
a document with Home and End.
End this viewing mode by pressing Q. Learn more about
the man
command itself with man
man
. Man pages are sorted in categories as shown in
Table 15.1, “Man Pages—Categories and Descriptions” (taken from the man page for man
itself).
Number |
Description |
---|---|
1 |
Executable programs or shell commands |
2 |
System calls (functions provided by the Kernel) |
3 |
Library calls (functions within program libraries) |
4 |
Special files (usually found in |
5 |
File formats and conventions ( |
6 |
Games |
7 |
Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), for example, man(7), groff(7) |
8 |
System administration commands (usually only for |
9 |
Kernel routines (nonstandard) |
Each man page consists of several parts labeled NAME , SYNOPSIS , DESCRIPTION , SEE ALSO , LICENSING , and AUTHOR . There may be additional sections available depending on the type of command.
Info pages are another important source of information on your system.
Usually, they are more detailed than man pages. They consist of more than
command line options and contain sometimes whole tutorials or reference
documentation. To view the info page for a certain command, enter
info
followed by the name of the command, for example,
info ls
. You can browse an info page with a viewer
directly in the shell and display the different sections, called
“nodes”. Use Space to move forward and
<— to move backwards. Within a node, you can
also browse with Page ↑ and
Page ↓ but only Space and
<— will take you also to the previous or
subsequent node. Press Q to end the viewing mode. Not
every command comes with an info page and vice versa.
In addition to the online versions of the SUSE manuals installed
under /usr/share/doc
, you can also access the
product-specific manuals and documentation on the Web. For an overview of
all documentation available for openSUSE Leap check out your
product-specific documentation Web page at
http://www.suse.com/doc/.
If you are searching for additional product-related information, you can also refer to the following Web sites:
The SUSE Technical Support can be found at http://www.suse.com/support/ if you have questions or need solutions for technical problems.
There are several forums where you can dive in on discussions about SUSE products. See http://forums.suse.com/ for a list.
An online community, which offers articles, tips, Q and A, and free tools to download: http://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/
Documentation for GNOME users, administrators and developers is available at http://library.gnome.org/.
The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is run by a team of volunteers who write Linux-related documentation (see http://www.tldp.org). It is probably the most comprehensive documentation resource for Linux. The set of documents contains tutorials for beginners, but is mainly focused on experienced users and professional system administrators. TLDP publishes HOWTOs, FAQs, and guides (handbooks) under a free license. Parts of the documentation from TLDP is also available on openSUSE Leap.
You can also try general-purpose search engines. For example, use the
search terms Linux CD-RW help
or OpenOffice
file conversion problem
if you have trouble with burning CDs or
LibreOffice file conversion.