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How do I read various manuals, guides and howtos, which are usually in the form of deb packages with names ending in -doc and installed in /usr/share/doc directory?

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First you need to install doc-base package, which registers all documentation that is not man pages or info files. Then you use one of the following packages - dwww, dhelp, doc-central, yelp, or khelpcenter4 - to view it.

Source: Debian FAQ: What other documentation exists on and for a Debian system?

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Tried all those: dwww worked great instantly (but is browser based; I like CLI but that's another thing), dhelp didn't work (for example, not hit for "xclip"), "doc-central" didn't work (doesn't seem to be a tool - no command installed, just a folder with a homepage that displays two frames, one of which is dysfunctional), yelp worked (GUI), khelpcenter4 didn't work with no trace whatsoever after aptitude install. Although dwww seems great, I'd like a CLI browser or emacs mode for this. As for links, lynx (@CarlosCampderrós below): a lot of those files are not in HTML. – Emanuel Berg Aug 2 '12 at 17:54
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To see doc in html form (of the packages that provide it), you can install apache2 on debian, and by default has an alias to /usr/share/doc, accessible only from localhost. So, install apache2 and then go to http://localhost/doc/.

Or you can use a text-based browser like w3m or links directly on the command line: w3m /usr/share/doc/lintian/lintian.html/index.html

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