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Because 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.

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Ubuntu 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.

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Or the great Slackware.

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good!!

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FTFA:"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.

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Web 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 <a class="user" href="http://www.manpages.spotlynx.com&quot;&gt;http://www.manpages.spotlynx.com&lt;/a&gt;

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HTML viewable pages<a class="user" href="http://www.highpr.net&quot;&gt;http://www.highpr.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="user" href="http://www.mad4.info&quot;&gt;http://www.mad4.info&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="user" href="http://vindictivebastard.net&quot;&gt;http://vindictivebastard.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="user" href="http://www.webthe.info&quot;&gt;http://www.webthe.info&lt;/a&gt;

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