39.1 Documentation Directory
The traditional directory to find documentation on 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.
39.1.1 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. For an overview
of all documentation available for your product refer to the preface of
the manuals.
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 on your installed system under
/usr/share/doc/release-notes/ or online at your
product-specific Web page at
https://www.novell.com/documentation/.
39.1.2 HOWTOs
If the howto package is
installed on your system, /usr/share/doc also holds
the howto subdirectory, where you find additional
documentation for many tasks relating to the setup and operation of
Linux software.
39.1.3 Package Documentation
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 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 example, 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.
