What's Installed?
The Debian designers have gone to great lengths to ensure the system is well documented. This pursuit has led them to include most of the necessary documentation on the Debian system for the packages you have installed. Let's take a look at some of the resources that are available on your computer.
/usr/share/doc/*
Almost every package that is installed under Debian installs some type of documentation information in the directory /usr/share/doc. Underneath this directory are subdirectories named after the packages which installed them. Here's what my /usr/share/doc directory looks like:
aalib1 diff hostname libc6-dev abiword docbook iamerican libcdparanoia0 acroread dpkg imlib-base libcomerr2 adduser dpkg-dev info libdb2 alien |
Since there are so many directories in /usr/share/doc, I have actually cut this short so it'll be a little more readable. We'll take a look at a specific package and its documentation. Abiword is a nice word processor which imports Microsoft Word documents and quite a few other formats. Let's take a look at the abiword subdirectory.
README.gz changelog.Debian.gz copyright examples |
One of the really cool things about the directory /usr/share/doc is that many times the applications have examples directories in them. These subdirectories usually contain sample configuration files for programs you may be trying to use, or tips and tricks to make them work even better. You'll also notice that many of these files have the extension .gz on them. This means that the file is compressed in the gzip format. To read it, you must first uncompress it somehow. One way is to fully uncompress the file with the gunzip command. However, this can waste a lot of space, and the purpose of having the files compressed in the first place is to save space.
An easier and more logical way to read compressed files is to use the 'zless' command. This command automatically uncompresses the file using gunzip, loads the file in memory, and uses the less command to present it to you. In order to view the README.gz file, execute the command:
bash$ zless README.gz |
 | If you get an error about a command not found, you may be missing the less package. zless is installed by default on Debian systems with the gzip package, but less, which zless depends on, may not be. If you need help installing missing packages, see the Newbiedoc "apt-get intro". |
------> README.gz <------ ---------------- Release Notes ---------------- Thank you for your interest in this Preview Release of AbiWord! ---- About AbiWord AbiWord is an "Open Source" word processor. (If you would like more information about the concept of Open Source, you might start looking at www.opensource.org.) ... |
You can use the arrow keys to scroll the file up and down or use the space bar to advance one screen at a time. When you're done reading the README.gz file just simply hit the q key.
/usr/doc/*
The directory /usr/doc/ is where all the documentation used to be stored, before Debian began changing to be compliant with current Linux standards. Anything located here instead of in /usr/share/doc/ is in violation of current Debian policy and will change soon.