I have installed Ruby and the Ruby-doc package (and also some other doc packages related to Ruby gems). However, ri does not work for core packages. Example: $ ri String = String < Object (from gem bigdecimal-1.3.2) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ = Instance methods: to_d (from gem rake-11.3.0) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ = Instance methods: ext, pathmap, pathmap_explode, pathmap_partial, pathmap_replace We can see that String related methods from the gems are displayed, but not what is in the core package. Similarily: $ ri 'String#length' Nothing known about String#length Is this a bug?