Colourful man pages in Ubuntu
Linux, Man pages, Ubuntu July 21st, 2008
Linux man pages are the most important resource for a Linux freak. By default man pages are formatted using the ‘less’ utility. ‘less’ shows the man pages in black & white, something like this :
If you use ‘most’ utility to format man pages, you will get a properly colour-formatted man pages. Take a look at man pages configured on my system :
Do you like this one ?? Read on how to configure ‘most’ as your man pages viewer.
Step 1: Install the package ‘most’
$ sudo aptitude install most
Step 2: Configure ‘most’ as your man page viewer using update-alternatives :
$ sudo update-alternatives --config pager
Enter the number corresponding to /usr/bin/most , here in this screenshot its 5.
Yeah, its done. Nothing more to do !!
Have fun.
Let me know if you find any difficulty doing this.
P.S: This can be done in Fedora as well as other linux also. In Fedora I guess you will have to use the command /usr/sbin/alternatives instead of update-alternatives as root. Somebody try out in Fedora and let me know.
Nice tip! But you need two dashes before config in the line:
$ sudo update-alternatives –config pager
i.e. –config
Ah, now I see… Your website interprets two dashes as a long dash!
@Mark
No worries .
Keep enjoying articles on this blog !!
I’d like “most” better if it had the same controls as “less”. I was definitely thrown off when I tried to use ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’ to scroll around! I can still work with “most” in the same way as “less,” but I like how I can use the ‘Page’, ‘Home’, and ‘End’ buttons, which are all grouped together on my keyboard, to scroll in “less”.
[...] Colourful man pages in Ubuntu [...]
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galternatives provides a nice GUI for updating the system’s alternatives setup. Its package and command name are both “galternatives”.
@Warbo
I prefer command line over gui
“most” is slightly more cumbersome to use. I find “less” simpler and faster at accomplishing things related to reading man pages. (Many shortcuts in “less” match those of vim what is great advantage to me.)
Also I am lazy to investigate how to change the default frustrating color palette used by “most.”
Thanks M8,
That looks gr8 and easier for my brain to get a handle on.
Hoo Roo . . .