From the course: Ubuntu Linux: Essential Commands and System Administration

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System documentation

System documentation

From the course: Ubuntu Linux: Essential Commands and System Administration

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System documentation

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How are we supposed to remember how commands work and how to use software and tools we've never used before? Well, Linux comes with documentation built right in. This documentation is called the manual pages, or more commonly, the man pages, because the command used to access them is just man. The virtual pages in this manual are stored as text files written in a markup language in the /usr/share/man folder. In most cases, when we install software, as we'll see shortly, the software comes with man pages that are added to this collection and become available for us to review. It can be interesting to browse this directory to see what's there. The man command uses a tool called less to display the man pages. Less is a widely used tool for browsing text, and it allows us to move around on a text document and search for what we're looking for. You can look up a lot of things with man, such as references for software that's installed, because most of the software intended to be used at the…

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