I prefer less. Incidentally, the other day I was on a CentOS system where I wanted to paginate a log file and typed in "less". Turns out, unlike more, less isn't installed by default. Was a bit surprised because I was under the impression that most Linux systems would have had it in their default install.
Debian doesn't install it by default either - agree, surprising. On another note, even more surprising is less's behavior with colored output (you have -r and -R switches, which are almost, but not completely, alike; and in neither of them does page-up render properly).
I was pretty sure this is incorrect for at least Debian 8 / Jessie based on recollection. And now I'm 100% sure it's false -- sighhttps://www.xkcd.com/386/ -- having just installed it in a VM with only "standard system utility" selected (it is selected by default), and verified that less is installed.
It's using debootstrap --variant=minbase, which (from the man page) "...only includes essential packages and apt." It makes sense that docker would want only the bare minimum. And to be fair, but getting into nit-picking territory, minbase is the default for debootstrap, but debootstrap is not the default method of installing Debian: debian-installer is. So docker's Debian image doesn't install less, but they're not doing a default install, as in invoking debian-installer, and keeping the preselected choices as much as possible.
Huh? "less -R" has always been working like a charm for me, for scrolling in both directions. Maybe it's related to your terminal emulator? (I use Konsole.)
