Thank you davidson, Davor and Ben. I appreciate your help and have resolved the issue. I am not well versed with such details and yes I agree this question would have been better posed on an Ubuntu mailing list. Next time, I will be more careful.
Regrads,
Nishan
On Mon, 22 Jan 2018, davidson wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2018, Nishan Singh Mann wrote:
>
>> Hello, on Ubuntu 17.10 which to my knowledge is based on Debian
>> unstable, installing Emacs via $sudo apt install emacs and then
>> trying to view the Emacs manual using C-h r fails with error "Info
>> file emacs does not exist" The same set of instructions on Ubuntu
>> 16.04 works and one ends up with a local copy of the GNU emacs
>> manual. Did the documentation get delegated to another package or
>> am I missing something? Thanks, Nishan
Regarding the differences you experience between Ubuntu 16.04 and
Ubuntu 17.10, it appears that the emacs24-common-non-dfsg package got
moved from the "main" component to the "universe" component, as can be
seen by examining the following files:
Ubuntu 16.04, packages in "main"
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
Ubuntu 17.10, packages in "universe"
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/artful/universe/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
[..]
> FOR UBUNTU
>
> As I recall, Ubuntu names its components somewhat differently; I
> don't believe it has a component named "non-free". So some
> translation is required to apply the workflow above to an Ubuntu
> system. It is my understanding that the Ubuntu's
> emacs24-common-non-dfsg package is in the "universe" component.
...as of Ubuntu 17.10, that is.