Translation(s): English - Español - Français - Italiano
manpage is short for Manual Page. A manual page should give a description of a CommandLine options, configuration file syntax, etc. and a few examples.
The man-db package includes three tools for finding information and/or documentation about your Linux system: man, apropos and whatis.
The man command formats and displays on-line manual pages about commands or functions on your system. To view a manual page, one simply types "man foo". The manual page is formatted and displayed by the $PAGER.
The apropos command searches the whatis database (containing short descriptions of system commands) for a string.
The whatis command searches its own database for a complete word.
The manpages package should be installed on your system because it is the primary way for find documentation on a Linux system.
The manual pages are stored in /usr/share/man.
Translations, locales
You can install translated pages in your language (available in normal packages or translation packages like manpages-fr) and select them using locales.
Reading manual pages in graphical environments
The x11-apps package contains xman, a manual page browser for the XWindow system.
- Gnome's help system lets you search and read manual pages.
- KDE's Khelpcenter supports manual page browsing and reading.
See also
manpages.debian.org - an online repository of all Debian manual pages
online man pages - the official online manual pages
the linux man-pages project - the manual pages project of the Linux Kernel Organization, Inc.
manned.org - online repository of manual pages from several different distros, and links to more manual page sites
ToDo: cleanup this page, refactor