SupportNet Online UNIX help date When you're first learning a new operating system, it's natural to look for some kind of reference tool to help you learn how to operate the computer. Because there are so many flavors of UNIX, there is no one comprehensive list of UNIX commands. UNIX comes with some built-in help tools that you may find valuable as you learn the operating system, though.
Man is short for manual.
The man pages are a collection of online reference notes about the commands your flavor of UNIX understands. Normally, the man pages are installed when the operating system is installed, however some system administrators choose to remove the man pages to conserve space. While the man pages do take up some disk space, it's generally not a good idea to remove them. Contained with the man pages are descriptions of the commands themselves, along with their proper syntax, options and arguments the commands will accept. To look up a man page for a specific command, type man followed by the command you're interested in at the shell prompt.