On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 03:03:22PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > Try typing in a terminal `info dd' and see what happens :)
unicorn:~$ info dd bash: info: command not found ;-) GNU's info pages are a highly debated thing, in some circles. Many people despise them, some people love them, and the vast majority are simply confused. The primary issue is the user interface for actually reading the damned things. You're supposed to be using emacs, and you're supposed to hit some bizarre hand-mutilating key chord to invoke the info page reader inside of emacs. If you're *not* an emacs user, then there's a standalone tool called "info" that they provide which is supposed to emulate the experience for you, somewhat. The problem here is that if you're not an emacs user, then the experience is *completely alien* and makes no sense at all. There's an alternative tool called "pinfo" that provides a different interface for reading info pages, which is a bit more comfortable for non-emacs users. It resembles lynx. But it has limitations and does not reproduce all of the features of the official tool. So, feel free to try both "info" and "pinfo" (some installation required) and see which one you can tolerate better. Or use the online web version of the pages, if that works better for you. Now, as for the info pages themselves: unlike traditional man pages, where all of the documentation is on one page, in which you can scroll up and down and search, info pages are chopped up into tiny little sections, and you only see one section at a time. This may be an advantage if you're actually looking for a specific feature that you suspect may exist, but you don't know what it's *called*. Navigating the hierarchical structure may lead you to a place that describes the feature you're looking for, although you'll have to do a lot of reading along the way. On the other hand, if you *do* know what something is called, or at least you have a few reasonable guesses, the inability to *search* within the info page to find occurrences of your keyword can be maddening.