We'l make three adjustments to the sources of Man. The first patch comments out the "MANPATH /usr/man" line in the man.conf file to prevent redundant results when using programs such as whatis: patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-manpath-patch-version;-manpath.patch The second patch adds the -R option to the PAGER variable so that escape sequences are handled properly: patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-pager-patch-version;-pager.patch The third and last patch prevents a problem when man pages not formatted with more than 80 columns are used in conjunction with recent releases of groff: patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-80cols-patch-version;-80cols.patch The paths to some programs are hard-wired into Man's executables. Unfortunately, the configuration script picks the last location in PATH rather than the first place a program is found. By appending /usr/bin:/bin to PATH for the ./configure command, we ensure that Man doesn't use the programs in the /tools directory. Now prepare Man for compilation: PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin ./configure -default -confdir=/etc Compile the package: make And install it: make install If you wish to disable SGR escape sequences, you should edit the man.conf file and add the -c argument to nroff. You may want to take a look at the man hint at , which deals with formatting and compression issues for man pages.