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Announcing the Ubuntu Manpage Repository

dustinkirkland.wordpress.com — http://manpages.ubuntu.com - This site contains nearly 300,000 HTML viewable manpages included in Ubuntu releases (Dapper, Feisty, Gutsy, Hardy, Intrepid) and across all of (main, universe, restricted, multiverse) and across all languages where manpages are available. It is automatically updated daily.

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  • mickstephenson, on 09/06/2008, -0/+18Great Idea, Brilliant Implementation. http://manpages.ubuntu.com/search.py?title=ifconfi ... reading man pages in a browser is much more pleasurable.
    • robdiggity, on 09/07/2008, -0/+5This comes as quite a relief as I've always just been too afraid to google "man" and "page"
      • mrsteveman1, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3That should have been one of the new features of Chrome (or a FFX plugin):

        "You are about to search for something totally gay, please click yes to continue...."
    • martalli, on 09/07/2008, -2/+1Sure, other man pages are available online, but this is specific to ubuntu, which I use. It is also well laid-out.
    • Vektuz, on 09/07/2008, -3/+2IMO its kind of sad.
      The very fact that its easier to view in a browser when in fact, on any ubuntu system you could just type "man ifconfig" means to me that the built in 'man' command is a poor choice and the editor used is too old and clumsy to be of value. Perhaps its time to replace the default installation of MAN with something like SUPERMAN which would output pretty much what is seen in the browser there?
      • mickstephenson, on 09/07/2008, -1/+1I like the superman idea, perhaps a gtk manpage viewer is in order
      • martalli, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3Konqueror already has this function. Just type "man:[command]" in the URL section and you get the manpage.
  • 4321234, on 09/06/2008, -2/+7I've found that viewing the manpage in a different format or viewer, sometimes I pick out something that I missed looking at it in a terminal. Maybe it's just me.
  • Vadi0, on 09/06/2008, -1/+10From the guy's blog post... this is how things should be done. See an issue, do something. Not whine on your blog posts with vulgarity throw in randomly:

    "Earlier this year, I found myself on IRC answering basic questions from an Ubuntu user about some random utility, and I asked him if he had read the manpage yet. He responded that he had read whatever he could find on the web, but he didn’t really dabble on the command line in general.

    It occurred to me that there may well be a contingent of Ubuntu users who are entirely disconnected from the wealth of resources so many developers have poured into manpage-based documentation.

    A cursory search turned up a couple of RH-based, or advertisement-riddled Linux manpage websites. I also found manpages.debian.net, which is closer to the Ubuntu target, but unfortunately, the pages are CGI-generated and thus not indexable by Google/Yahoo.

    So I submitted a request-for-comments to the Ubuntu Documentation team, and no one could point me to an existing web repository of Ubuntu’s manpages. I started the obligatory Launchpad Blueprint, Wiki Specification, and Bazaar project."
  • kd420, on 09/06/2008, -1/+3Excellent resource, a great page to bookmark.
  • iampriteshdesai, on 09/07/2008, -3/+15Will anybody plz explain what exactly are these Ubuntu Manpages?
    I use ubutnu but don't know what manpages are.
    • smotpoker, on 09/07/2008, -2/+23man is short for "manual" and is also the name of the command to see information on various commands/files/functions on a *nix based system. IE you type "man wget" to see a description of the wget command and all of it's options.

      Sometimes manual pages change a bit depending on what version of a command you are using. "Ubuntu man pages" are typically just regular man pages whose versions correspond to specific Ubuntu versions since different Ubuntu releases have slightly different versions of commands/utilities.
    • BrainInAJar, on 09/07/2008, -8/+7I think he was making a joke about ubuntu users being too clueless to know what man pages are
    • huff51, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6man man
    • Hardcore41, on 09/07/2008, -4/+1I dont understand either. Manpage?
    • enantiodromia, on 09/07/2008, -1/+1lol, that's funny :)
  • smotpoker, on 09/07/2008, -3/+3This idea is kinda dumb if you ask me. There are plenty of HTML manual pages on the web already that do not differ significantly between command/app versions and standard man pages are often a bit too technical for "average desktop users" anyway.

    If you wanna Ubuntu-ify them and make them more easily understood by laymen at the same time they might prove useful but just copy/pasting the current text out of man pages is a waste of time and effort IMO
    • mohamedmansour, on 09/07/2008, -2/+4Its not dumb, it is quite nice. You can search for any command online and see where it exists in which distribution. Quite useful I'd say.
      • smotpoker, on 09/07/2008, -1/+4You mean you can see if it exists in whichever version of Ubuntu. Versions or releases != distributions

        I guess if you have some profound need to know what's available in a version you aren't running it could be useful but for most people it is not any easier or better than using the man command or searching repos.

        I won't say that it's completely useless but I still believe it is not worth the effort
    • rpgmaker, on 09/07/2008, -1/+1Howtos doesn't have all the technical info about an specific piece of software as the manpages do. Don't confuse them, they are different things.
      • SteveMax, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2I googled for "online man". Fortunately, Google understood it wasn't a gay query (not that there's anything wrong with that), and the first result was http://man.he.net/ which seems a bit incomplete. http://linux.die.net/man/ seems to have everything I tried to search, even deprecated commands such as dund. I agree with smotpoker, there is no need for another online man collection, specially because man:/ is already a supported protocol in konqueror and you can read any manpage installed in your computer directly on the file manager.
  • sandaboy, on 09/07/2008, -11/+5Where can I find them Womanpages?
  • booly3412, on 09/07/2008, -9/+1I use Ubuntu, but only to make people think I'm better than I really am.
    • xsquirrel378x, on 09/07/2008, -0/+8wrong system bro. use OpenBSD if you want to make people think you are better than them.
      • Paranormalized, on 09/07/2008, -0/+1"use OpenBSD if you want to make people think you are better than them"

        Nah, you use OpenBSD if you want to make people think _you_ think you are better than them.
    • souravondigg, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1Or the great Slackware.
  • baconz, on 09/07/2008, -9/+3Oomboontoo man pages. That sounds gay.
  • pavelmah, on 09/07/2008, -5/+3eh.
    No offense. Not really a great idea. Manpages are already accessibly very easily online from many sites. People who are working on dumb-terminal can choose to download manpages that already comes with the packages; whats the point of having a seperate repo for manpages?

    If you ask me, it seems like a waste of time.
    • sirjoebob, on 09/07/2008, -1/+1The purpose of this is evident when looking at your comment. The issue is not that they are not available but that you have to go to "many" sites sometimes. This is just an effort at putting it all in one place.
    • veruus, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1FTFA:
      "A cursory search turned up a couple of RH-based, or advertisement-riddled Linux manpage websites. I also found manpages.debian.net, which is closer to the Ubuntu target, but unfortunately, the pages are CGI-generated and thus not indexable by Google/Yahoo."

      I've seen the manpage websites before, and while useful, they're not Ubuntu specific. I think it would be a great idea for every distro to have just this thing. There are sometimes differences. Reading manpages in the terminal is a bit annoying at times. I like the ability to use the browser instead.
  • BrainInAJar, on 09/07/2008, -0/+29And people /STILL/ won't ***** read them.
  • xsquirrel378x, on 09/07/2008, -8/+2>300,000 HTML viewable manpages

    fat nerds rejoice
    • arjie, on 09/07/2008, -2/+7Thin nerds prefer the command line? Not quite sure what you're getting at here. Do they use up all the calories while typing? Is there something about the prompt that makes you slim? Does Weight Watchers have competition?

      All these questions and more, asked only on digg.com
  • emblemparade, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6This is a great project.

    I would also like to point out that Yelp supports man pages. Type:

    yelp man:fdisk

    It would be nice if this were more tightly integrated into Ubuntu.



  • booly3412, on 09/07/2008, -9/+2UBUNTU is the sound monkeys make in Bulgaria.
    • BrainInAJar, on 09/07/2008, -2/+6No, no no...

      it's a tribal african word, which translates roughly to "can't install debian"
  • jsmith77555, on 09/07/2008, -8/+2Ubuntu, you suck.
  • Stalks, on 09/07/2008, -0/+8http://linux.die.net/man/
  • hollywoodphony, on 09/07/2008, -0/+4Well, that gets my vote for "Funniest Unintentional Gay Reference of the Day".
  • enantiodromia, on 09/07/2008, -1/+2how are there even 300,000 man pages in existence? wtf?
    • Vektuz, on 09/07/2008, -0/+2Because its the standard way to document anything.

      Every command you can execute in a base linux system has a page in the manual for itself.
      But also every program you install (even third party programs) often add their manuals to the standard manual repository. So when you install, say, the Gnome Desktop - all those apps that install (nautilus, calculator, etc) will also have their own manpages added. So you could then type "man nautilus" and get the help for it.

      Theres a lot of software out there. On a users system, only the manpages for actually installed software is there, but its easy to think that in total, 300,000 pages exist.
      • enantiodromia, on 09/07/2008, -0/+1yes i know all that, i still say 300,000 sounds like a lot
      • SteveMax, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1The site has five versions of each man page, one for each Ubuntu version since 6.06. This helps them inflate the numbers a lot.
  • enantiodromia, on 09/07/2008, -4/+3and btw snooty linux snobs, Ubuntu is used by way more sysadmins and developers than you might think out here in silicon valley.

    it's all well and good tricking out your Slack box or standard Debian machine, but people with jobs have way less time to dick around with their machines than people who wish they had jobs.

    of course, more and more people out here are switching to MacBook Pros than anything else, for what its worth.
    • tnoy, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2And then there are those of us that only need about 15 minutes to customize our standard debian install.

      If you don't have enough time to spend 15 minutes once every couple years, then you suck at your job.
      • souravondigg, on 09/08/2008, -1/+0Or he has a family. In which case he is not a 'geek'.
  • fatas, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6No Windows users, you probably thought this was going to make you switch but this is not the Gay porn you were anticipating.
  • bruenig, on 09/07/2008, -1/+4Ubuntu users don't read man pages. Come on.
  • PHiZ187, on 09/07/2008, -0/+4http://www.manpages.com/
  • martalli, on 09/07/2008, -0/+4I think it would be worthwhile to mention that konqueror will show man pages by typing things like man:tar or man:mplayer in the URL box... I like this website they made, but in a very real sense this is just for people not using KDE...
  • frontporsche, on 09/07/2008, -0/+1Now, if they just add all the /usr/share/doc stuff, and then add links both ways between the man pages and the docs.
  • Jalada, on 09/07/2008, -1/+2OK so because it's got Ubuntu in it everyone is more interested and thinks it's new and great. And yes, there are some other repositories out there. But Ubuntu is getting so much usage now, that having an Ubuntu themed repository with all the different versions of Ubuntu available and therefore all the right versions of the commands, is still a good thing.
  • thosiris, on 09/07/2008, -0/+2As much as I like Ubuntu, I think its becoming way too popular. Other distros need to step up to the plate and show that they (Gentoo, Slackware, etc) are just as great, if not better, than Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu Manpages is an awesome idea - I've got to give them that.
    • sirjoebob, on 09/07/2008, -1/+3Ubuntu is focusing on improving user experience. Not everyone appreciates the complexities of Gentoo for example. The big thing that the Linux community needs to do is quit noob-bashing Ubuntu and get behind it enough to say: "look at what Linux can do with direction and purpose." and then expose Ubuntu users to more specialized variants of Linux.

      The important thing that Ubuntu has done is greatly increase awareness of desktop Linux and I think this will be more important in the long run than the OS itself.
  • BlackMask, on 09/07/2008, -7/+1you know your OS is messed up when you need thousands and thousands of manual or MAN pages to operate it
    • andycr512, on 09/07/2008, -0/+1At least we -have- decent command line tools -to- document.
  • lzj235711, on 09/08/2008, -0/+0good!!
  • elzbal, on 11/08/2008, -0/+0Web browsers provide a far, far more comfortable way to view man pages. But there's tons of sites that are able to display man pages. I tend to use http://www.manpages.spotlynx.com
  •  

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