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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is there a better way to browse man pages? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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For many, many years now when I want to browse a man page about something I'll type man X into my terminal, substituting X for whatever it is I wish to learn about. Depending on the manual, it's short and therefore easy to find what I want, or I am deep in the woods because I'm trying to find a specific flag that appears many times in a very long document. Woe is me if the flag switch is a bare letter, like x.

And let's say it is x. Now I am searching with /x followed by n n n n n n n n N n n n n n. Obviously I'm not finding the information I want, the search is literal (not fuzzy, nor "whole word"), and even if I find something the manual pager might overshoot me because finding text will move the found line to the top of the terminal, and maybe the information I really want comes one or two lines above.

So... there HAS to be a better way, right? There has to be a modern, fast, easily greppable version to go through a man page. Does it exist?

P.S. I am not talking about summaries like tldr because I typically don't need summaries but actual technical descriptions.

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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In KDE, there used to be man: as a protocol that you could use from Konqueror or anything else for that matter. Does it still exist?

I'm at work and cannot check.

[–] JRepin@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yup still exists. It is also available in KDE Help Center. And you can quickly jump to a man page you typing "#man" into KRunner.