-
Installation instructions for the current release: see
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/install.
-
Packaging manual is the primary documentation on the technical aspects of
creating Debian binary and source packages.
You can find it in the packaging-manual package, or at ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/package-developer/packaging.html.tar.gz.
-
Policy manual documents the policy requirements for the distribution, i.e. the
structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the
operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must
satisfy to be included in the distribution.
Get it from the debian-policy package, or at ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/package-developer/policy.html.tar.gz.
-
Documentation on installed Debian packages: Most packages have files that are
unpacked into /usr/doc/PACKAGE.
-
Documentation on the Linux project: The Debian package
doc-linux
installs all of the most recent versions of the HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs from the
Linux Documentation Project.
-
Unix-style `man' pages: Most commands have manual pages written in the style of
the original Unix 'man' files. They are referenced by the section of the 'man'
directory where they reside: e.g., foo(3) refers to a manual page which resides
in /usr/share/man/man3/, and it can be called by executing the command:
man 3 foo, or just man foo if section 3 is the first
one containing a page on foo.
One can learn which directory of /usr/share/man/ contains a
certain manual page by executing man -w foo.
New Debian users should note that the 'man' pages of many general system
commands are not available until they install these packages:
-
GNU-style `info' pages: User documentation for many commands, particularly GNU
tools, is available not in `man' pages, but in `info' files which can be read
by the GNU tool info, by running M-x info within GNU
Emacs, or with some other Info page viewer.
Its main advantage over the original `man' pages are that it is a hypertext
system. It does not require the WWW, however; info can
be run from a plain text console. It was designed by Richard Stallman and
preceded the WWW.
Note that you may access a lot of documentation on your system by using a WWW
browser, through `dwww' or `dhelp' commands, found in respective packages.