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12.1 Included Help Resources
There are several places where you can find online documentation
shipped with your product:
- Desktop Help Centers
-
The help centers of both the KDE desktop (KDE help center) and the GNOME
desktop (Yelp) provide 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 Novell/SUSE manuals delivered with your product.
Learn more about your desktop's help center in Section 12.1.1, Using the KDE Help Center and
Section 12.1.2, Using GNOME Yelp.
- Documentation in /usr/share/doc
-
This traditional help directory holds various documentation files
and the release notes for your system. Find more detailed information in
Section 12.1.3, 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 12.1.4, Man Pages and Section 12.1.5, Info Pages.
- Separate Help Packages for Some Applications
-
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 The GIMP, may have different online help packages that can be
installed separately with YaST and do not integrate into the help
centers.
12.1.1 Using the KDE Help Center
From the KDE desktop, you can access the KDE help center in various ways: If
you need information from within an application, simply click the
application's button or press F1
to open the application's documentation in the help center. If you start
the help center from the main menu, or from the command line with
susehelp, you are taken to the main window of the help
center from which you can browse the help topics.
The menu and the toolbar provide options for printing contents from
the help center, searching the currently displayed page, and navigating
and customizing the help center. The display field in the right part of
the window always shows the currently selected contents, such as online
manuals, search results, or Web pages.
The navigation area in the left part of the window contains several
tabs:
-
-
Presents a tree view of all available information sources. The
help center addresses various target groups, such as users,
administrators, and developers. Click the book icons to open and browse
the individual categories. Under the heading
, for example, you can also browse man
(manual) and info (information) pages associated with command line
programs. The help center also provides access to some online databases
that cover special hardware and software issues for your product. All
these sources can be searched conveniently once a search index has been
generated.
The contents of your help center depends on which software
packages are currently installed and which languages are selected as
your system languages.
-
-
Provides a quick reference where you can look up the definitions
of words that might be unfamiliar to you.
-
-
Holds options for the full text search of the help center. You can
combine several search criteria.
Searching the Help Center
To use the full text search KDE help center offers, generate a search index
and set the search parameters. If the search index has not yet been
generated, the system automatically prompts you to do so when you click
the tab.
-
To search for a term, click and
enter the search string.
-
To combine your search strings with operands, click
and select the operand to use.
-
Choose an option from to limit the
number of hits to display.
-
To restrict your search to certain types of documentation, choose
an option from . With
, a predefined selection of documents is
searched. includes all types of documents in the
search. lets you define which documents to
include in your search. Just activate the documents you want in the
list.
-
When you have set the options according to your wishes, click
. The search results are then displayed as a
list of links in the display field and can be navigated with mouse
clicks.
Generating a New Search Index
-
To create a new search index, select from the menu. A window opens, showing a list of
documentation currently available in the help center.
-
Select the documents to integrate in the search index and click
. After the index has been generated, you
can use the full text search.
12.1.2 Using GNOME Yelp
On the GNOME desktop, to start Yelp directly from an application,
either click the button or press
F1. Both options take you directly to the application's
documentation in the help center. However, you can also start Yelp from
the main menu, or from the command line with yelp and
then browse through the main window of the help center.
The menu and the toolbar provide options for navigating and
customizing the help center, for searching and for printing contents from
Yelp. To view a table of contents, click .
The help topics are grouped into categories presented as links. Click one
of the links to open a list of topics for that category. To search for an
item, just enter the search string into the search field at the top of the
window.
12.1.3 Documentation Directory
The traditional directory to find documentation in your
installed Linux system is /usr/share/doc. Usually,
the directory contains information about the packages installed on your
system, release notes, manuals, and more.
NOTE: Contents Depends on Installed Packages
In the Linux world, many manuals and other kinds of documentation
are available in form of packages, just 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.
Novell/SUSE Manuals
We provide HTML and PDF versions of our books in different
languages. In the manual subdirectory, find HTML
versions of most of the Novell/SUSE manuals available for your
product:
-
Start-Up
-
Guides you through the installation and basic configuration of your
system. For newcomers, the manual also introduces basic Linux concepts
such as the file system, the user concept and access permissions and gives
an overview of the features openSUSE offers to support mobile
computing. Provides help and advice in troubleshooting.
-
KDE Quick Start
-
Gives a short introduction to the KDE desktop
and some key applications running on it.
-
KDE User Guide
-
Introduces the KDE desktop of openSUSE and a variety of
applications shipping with it. It guides you through using these
applications and helps you perform key tasks. It is intended mainly for
end users who want to make efficient use of KDE in everyday life.
-
GNOME Quick Start
-
Gives a short introduction to the GNOME desktop
and some key applications running on it.
-
GNOME User Guide
-
Introduces the GNOME desktop of openSUSE and a variety of
applications you will encounter when working with the GNOME desktop. It
guides you through using these applications and helps you perform key
tasks. It is intended mainly for end users who want to make efficient use
of applications running on the GNOME desktop.
-
Reference
-
Gives you a general understanding of openSUSE and
covers advanced system administration tasks. It is
intended mainly for system administrators and home users with basic system
administration knowledge. It provides detailed information about advanced
deployment scenarios, administration of your system, the interaction of
key system components and the set-up of various network and file services
openSUSE offers.
-
Novell AppArmor Quick Start
-
Helps you understand the main concepts behind
Novell® AppArmor.
-
Novell AppArmor Administration Guide
-
Contains in-depth information about the use of
Novell AppArmor in your environment.
-
Lessons For Lizards
-
A community book project for the openSUSE distribution. A
snapshot of the manual written by the open source community is released on
an equal footing with the Novell/SUSE manuals. The lessons are written
in a cook book style and cover more specific or exotic topics than the
traditional manuals. For more information, see https://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Lessons_for_Lizards.
If more than one language is installed,
/usr/share/doc/manual may contain different language
versions of the manuals. The HTML versions of the Novell/SUSE manuals
are also available in the help center of both desktops. For information
where to find the PDF and HTML versions of the books on your installation
media, refer to the openSUSE Release Notes. They are available from your
installed system under /usr/share/doc/release-notes/
or online at https://www.novell.com/documentation/opensuse103.
HOWTOs
If the howto package
is installed on your system /usr/share/doc also
holds the howto subdirectory in which to find
additional documentation on many tasks relating to the setup and
operation of Linux software.
Package Documentation
Under packages, find the documentation
included in the software packages installed on your system. For every
package, a subdirectory
/usr/share/doc/packages/packagename
is created that often holds 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 is
mandatory and many packages might just 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 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.
12.1.4 Man Pages
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 PgUp and PgDn. 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 12-1 (taken from the man page for man
itself).
Table 12-1 Man Pages—Categories and Descriptions
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 /dev) |
5 |
File formats and conventions
(/etc/fstab) |
6 |
Games |
7 |
Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), for
example, man(7), groff(7) |
8 |
System administration commands (usually only for root) |
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.
12.1.5 Info Pages
Info pages are another important source of information on your
system. Usually they are more verbose than man pages. 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 Backspace to
move backwards. Within a node, you can also browse with PgUp and PgDn but only Space and Backspace will take you also
to the previous or subsequent node. Like for the man pages, press
Q to end the viewing mode. Not every man page comes with
an info page and vice versa.
With KDE or GNOME desktop, you can also access (or print) man pages
and info pages:
- KDE
-
In Konqueror, to view the man page for ls, type
man:/ls in the location bar. If there are different
categories for a command, Konqueror displays them as links. To display
the info page for grep, for example, type
info:/grep.
In the KDE help center, check out in the
table of contents to browse man pages and info pages.
- GNOME
-
Run yelp man:ls or yelp
info:ls to display the man or info page.
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