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Clarification: Just making fun of people(including myself) who watch shitty videos instead of official documentation.
I really like the man pages, but they're an encyclopedia, not a tutorial. Great for looking up specifics when you already have a foundation. Not so great when starting out
When I was first learning programming I had a teacher who insisted that the only resource we could was the Java docs.
When you want to know what parameters you need to pass or what certain flags do, it's a great resource. When you don't even know how to iterate through an array, it's not the first place to look.
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.
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.
Has anyone here ever come across a low res tutorial video with microsmic font that is impossible to read? I appreciate their desire to help others but why do people do that?
Having a good --help command does wonders.
There are man pages which do avoid me opening a web browser, the systemd ones are pretty good for example.
I just installed tldr to test it out tho.
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.
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.
Man pages are literally indecipherable as a newby
I just wish they'd put some damn usage examples in there. I usually just need to do one thing I don't need a dissertation about it.
As a CS bachelor, I feel like programmers are not so good at giving examples. They are used to refactoring to cover more general cases. It's a part that makes me struggle at mathematics the most, because good examples are like half of math.
Some man pages have them. I agree that they should be more common though.
No worries!
man man
... I'm in over my head here.
Copypastes every terminal command string from every forum post they see, hoping one of them fixes the problem
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?
"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 guide~~
For 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)"
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.
You're not a real linux user unless you've read the source because the documentation was inadequate.
This is nixos.
For those that didn't pick it up, this is sarcasm
Is it tho?
Free tech tip: https://cht.sh serves practical, usage-focused help on common command-line tasks. You can visit the website, or even better, curl for what you want.
$ curl cht.sh/touch
gets you this:
cheat:touch
# To change a file's modification time:
touch -d <time> <file>
touch -d 12am <file>
touch -d "yesterday 6am" <file>
touch -d "2 days ago 10:00" <file>
touch -d "tomorrow 04:00" <file>
# To put the timestamp of a file on another:
touch -r <refrence-file> <target-file>
Append with ~ and a word to show only help containing that word:
$ curl cht.sh/zstd~compress
Result:
tldr:zstd
# zstd
# Compress or decompress files with Zstandard compression.
# More information: <https://github.com/facebook/zstd>.
# Decompress a file:
zstd -d path/to/file.zst
# Decompress to `stdout`:
zstd -dc path/to/file.zst
# Compress a file specifying the compression level, where 1=fastest, 19=slowest and 3=default:
zstd -level path/to/file
# Unlock higher compression levels (up to 22) using more memory (both for compression and decompression):
zstd --ultra -level path/to/file
For more usage tips, curl cht.sh/:help.
Man pages are useful references but go ahead and learn how to use sed or awk from their man pages.
Yep.
That's what the RTFM folks don't seem to understand: if you didn't even know, what you're looking for, you can't look it up.
I've gotten in the dumbfounding habit of searching man <program> on the web instead of in the terminal I'm already typing in.
Man pages fucking suck, and I say that having been working with linux full time professionally for 11 years.
The best ones have plenty of examples.
Yeah, I'm writing code on Linux and for Linux and I use it extensively since 2012. I can remember maybe one or two times man was really helpful. Usually it's an enormous book that somehow doesn't contain exactly that bit information that you're looking for
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.
Man pages are for reference, not learning.
Consider this, nearly every major distro (and some minor distros like Alpine) has a wiki (or is based on a Distro that does).
Some mans are unreadable. I've been curling cheat.sh/[command] and its been great for example commands. Highly recommend.