Clarification: Just making fun of people(including myself) who watch shitty videos instead of official documentation.
“How do I do X in linux?”
“Yeah so basically you just need to run this command and it should work on Ubuntu 12.10 (Last edited: Nov 2012)”
“Hey guys the way to do X changed in Ubuntu 16.04, see this updated link (Posted: Jan 2017)”
“Actually Ubuntu 18.04 is now using Y so you have to follow this new guide (Last edited: Jul 2019)”
"
Crossed-out outdated guideFor Ubuntu 22, please reference this Canonical guide here. All other distros can simply use Z (Last edited: Aug, 2022)"
“404 not found (Canonical)”
“How do I do X in Debian?”
“You can run Z to do X (Posted: Oct 2013)”
“Thanks for this, it worked! (Posted: Sep 2023)”
“How do I do X in Fedora?”
“Ah just follow this wiki (Posted: Feb 2014)”
“(Wiki last update: Mar 2023)”
“How do I do X In Arch?”
“RTFM lmao: link to arch wiki (Posted: May 2017)”
“(Wiki last update: 3 minutes ago)”
“How to do X on Y?” “Why would you ever want to do X? Do Z instead!”
Did you know you can filter search results by time? When it comes to computer questions in particular, I always ask for results from within the past year.
Zero results found
Hmmmm
Then it’s time to expand the date range and/or try other search engines. Sometimes you’re just fucked and you have to make a post.
Man pages are for people who already know a lot about Linux and understand all the nuances and understanding of Linux
Even after using Linux for many many years I still don’t understand wtf nearly all man pages mean. It’s like a fucking codex. It needs to be simplified but not to the extreme where it doesn’t give you information you need to understand it.
Tbh that’s most of Linux, not designed for average people, designed by Linux users who think that all others should know everything about Linux.
l must be using man pages very differently from you. To me they are mostly the easy reference to check the available flags for a command, and sometimes the reference on available config file entries, e.g. ssh_config(5)
For those things I was using them quite soon when I started using Linux, because it’s quicker than googleing every time if you just need one flag or one option name. For more complex things, like tar-and-gzip in one which needs like four, I still google though.
Probably there are very complicated ones too, the ones explaining subsystems or APIs of the kernel, but those I don’t need as a user.
I don’t get it either. I can see how you’re getting confused if you end up in section 2 or 3 of the manpages or with the kernel calls. But that’s not what a beginner is looking for. The manpages for the user commands are pretty alright. Sometimes even excellent.
It depends on who writes them, I guess. More “modern” software come with pretty good and concise manpages, meanwhile stuff like the coreutils still have manpages that feel like an incomprehensible mess.
Tbh a lot of man pages don’t even give you enough usage information to make full use of a package. I’m thinking of the ones which are like an extended
--helpblockEnter tldr and navi
I’d like to add
aproposto this as well.my favorite is tealdeer!
I find them very useful for programs that I already know what to use them for otherwise I usually consult the arch wiki.
They also usually assume a lot about the users’ knowledge of the domain of the program itself.
In my experience, many programs’ man/help is very brief, often a sentence or less per command/flag, with 2 or more terms that don’t mean anything to the uninitiated. Also, even when I think I know all the words, the descriptions are not nearly precise enough to confidently infer what exactly the program is going to do.
Disclaimers for potentially dangerous/irreversible actions are also often lacking.Which is why I almost always look for an article that explains a command using examples, instead of trying to divine what the manual authors had in mind.
what the fuck is a man page
whatis mansomething related to mansplaining… /s
its a giant wall of text i have never used that can be opened with the terminal command
man <othercommand>where <othercommand> is literally any other commandoh is it short for ‘manual’?
yeah i kind of forgot that word
man man…
same energy as “moon moon”
How do you find the good ones around all the spam and absolute trash though? Teach me sensei please?!
After many years of tiptoeing through the distros, from RedHat 5 and Mandrake6 to Slack to Gentoo and now Fedora 41. The last thing I want anymore is to need to go RTFM.
I don’t want to open a terminal to compile anything, (I got stacks of tee shirts), or goggle, (yes goggle), to make things work. I’m too old for this crap and I don’t have that much longer to live wasting my short time remaining staring at a terminal and reading man pages. Distros and Linux by extension should “just work” in 2025. And thankfully they do-- most of the time.
You want to be a Sysadmin and a cmd line commando, have at it. I’m peacing out.
Now if only GUIs could be called and worked telepathically. Or better yet, fix any problems before they happen without me even knowing about it.
That’s one of the reasons why I prefer to run older, enterprise hardware.
There’s a good chance, everything has been configured before and most distros work just fine without any tweaking.
I want a stable platform to work on, not another hobby.
My dryer broke the other day, which turned out to be the heating element. I watched a bunch of videos to try and figure out how to troubleshoot the problem and hopefully address it.
One of the videos, after an intro, claimed to have the solution. Then they proceeded to talk about the temperature control features of the machine and how I should make sure the heat is turned on.
That is the level many of the unix / software development videos out there. Just literally some AI slop or silly person who doesn’t know what they are talking about uploading a quick clip to grow their channel.
I really like the man pages for commands that have examples of some common usage at the bottom, that gets you kickstarted and you can just adapt your own command from the example.
tldris good for this.tldr for tldr lol
Same outcome even if you read man pages
Hahah true, its a skill issue.
Man page author issue
A lot of man pages suck ass.
Except openBSD ones, they should be the standard of quality for user documentation.
You ask someone for instructions
They send you some bullshit 10 minutes long video
Now instead of ctrl+f or skimming the article and jumping where you want to go you need to jump around in a video
REEEE
I have a theory a lot of people are functionally illiterate and thus prefer videos as they can’t skim well
Or maybe they just grok things more effectively via verbal instruction and visual aids?
Isn’t that the same thing?
deleted by creator
You’re not a real linux user unless you’ve read the source because the documentation was inadequate.
For those that didn’t pick it up, this is sarcasm
Is it tho?
This is nixos.
I’d say that only those who manage to write a kernel code that doesn’t upset Linus Torvald are true linux users.
Even Linus Trovald writes kernel code that Linus Trovald doesn’t like.
Consider this, nearly every major distro (and some minor distros like Alpine) has a wiki (or is based on a Distro that does).
Thihi and sooner or later they all end up at the arch linux wikis.
We use arch btw.
I also use Arch btw :3
Nice friend
Fren :3
True but if you’re distro offers a good enough user experience then you won’t be spending nearly as much time in docs, as opposed to just enjoying your desktop.
Being for more “technical people” is just a lame excuse for bad UX.
Having extensive documentation is always nice regardless of UX, sometimes its nice to have a wiki that explains how everything works.
Yes but too often distros, and their communities, rely on the ol’ : just read the docs.
And those docs than point to other docs that point to other docs.
Having a good
--helpcommand does wonders.There are man pages which do avoid me opening a web browser, the
systemdones are pretty good for example.I just installed
tldrto test it out tho.Honestly I kinda like man pages. It is a pain but it is the least painful. And compared to e.g. the PowerShell docs, I love the man pages.
I mostly use Tealdear but
--helpworks well when Tealdear gets too simplified.Man pages suck ass. But not as much as fucking YouTube tutorials.
Can someone just write a nice plain English instruction page?
