20 Help and documentation #Edit source
openSUSE® Leap comes with several sources of information and documentation, available online or integrated into your installed system.
- Product Documentation
Extensive documentation for openSUSE Leap is available at https://doc.opensuse.org. Topics covered range from deployment, upgrade and system administration to virtualization, system tuning and security, among others.
- Documentation in
/usr/share/doc This directory holds release notes for your system (in the subdirectory
release-notes). It also contains information of installed packages in the subdirectorypackages. Find more detailed information in Section 20.1, “Documentation directory”.- Man pages and info pages for shell commands
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 20.2, “Man pages” and Section 20.3, “Info pages”.
- Desktop help center
The help center of the GNOME desktop (Help) provides central access to the GNOME desktop documentation.
- Separate help packages for certain applications
When installing new software with YaST, the software documentation is normally installed automatically and appears in the help center of your desktop. However, certain 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.
20.1 Documentation directory #Edit source
The traditional directory to find documentation on your installed Linux
system is /usr/share/doc. The directory contains the
release notes and information about the packages installed on your system,
plus manuals and more.
Note: Contents depend on installed packages
In the Linux world, 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/doc 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.
20.1.1 Release notes #Edit source
We provide HTML, PDF, RTF and text versions of 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 https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes/.
20.1.2 Package documentation #Edit source
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 only include a few of them.
AUTHORSList of the main developers.
BUGSKnown bugs or malfunctions. May also contain a link to a Bugzilla Web page where you can search all bugs.
CHANGES,ChangeLogSummary of changes from version to version. It is interesting for developers, because it is detailed.
COPYING,LICENSELicensing information.
FAQQuestion and answers collected from mailing lists or newsgroups.
INSTALLHow 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.
TODOFeatures planned for the future.
MANIFESTList of files with a brief summary.
NEWSDescription of what is new in this version.
20.2 Man pages #Edit source
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 20.1, “Man pages—categories and descriptions” (taken from the man page for man
itself).
Table 20.1: Man pages—categories and descriptions #
|
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 (normally 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 (normally 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.
20.3 Info pages #Edit source
Info pages are another important source of information on your system.
normally, 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 backward. Within a node, you can also
browse with Page ↑ and Page ↓
but only Space and <—
takes 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.
20.4 Online resources #Edit source
For an overview of all documentation available for openSUSE Leap check out the product-specific documentation Web pages at https://doc.opensuse.org/.
If you are searching for additional product-related information, you can also refer to the following Web sites:
- User community
- GNOME documentation
Documentation for GNOME users, administrators and developers is available at https://help.gnome.org/.
- The Linux documentation project
The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is run by a team of volunteers who write Linux-related documentation (see https://tldp.org/). It is a 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 are also available on openSUSE Leap.