Clarification: Just making fun of people(including myself) who watch shitty videos instead of official documentation.
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.
Enter tldr and navi
Iโd like to add apropos to this as well.
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.
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 --help block
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.
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.
Install tealdeer. Then instead of man programname type tldr programname.
No worries!
man man
... I'm in over my head here.
Here's a excerpt from man chmod that can be summarized as "You probably want to mark the file you downloaded as executable. Run chmod +x FILENAME"
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of chmod. chmod
changes the file mode bits of each given file according to mode,
which can be either a symbolic representation of changes to make,
or an octal number representing the bit pattern for the new mode
bits.
The format of a symbolic mode is [ugoa...][[-+=][perms...]...], where perms is either zero or more letters from the set rwxXst, or a single letter from the set ugo. Multiple symbolic modes can be given, separated by commas.
A combination of the letters ugoa controls which users' access to the file will be changed: the user who owns it (u), other users in the file's group (g), other users not in the file's group (o), or all users (a). If none of these are given, the effect is as if (a) were given, but bits that are set in the umask are not affected.
The operator + causes the selected file mode bits to be added to the existing file mode bits of each file; - causes them to be removed; and = causes them to be added and causes unmentioned bits to be removed except that a directory's unmentioned set user and group ID bits are not affected.
The letters rwxXst select file mode bits for the affected users: read (r), write (w), execute (or search for directories) (x), execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute permission for some user (X), set user or group ID on execution (s), restricted deletion flag or sticky bit (t). Instead of one or more of these letters, you can specify exactly one of the letters ugo: the permissions granted to the user who owns the file (u), the permissions granted to other users who are members of the file's group (g), and the permissions granted to users that are in neither of the two preceding categories (o).
A numeric mode is from one to four octal digits (0-7), derived by adding up the bits with values 4, 2, and 1. Omitted digits are assumed to be leading zeros. The first digit selects the set user ID (4) and set group ID (2) and restricted deletion or sticky (1) attributes. The second digit selects permissions for the user who owns the file: read (4), write (2), and execute (1); the third selects permissions for other users in the file's group, with the same values; and the fourth for other users not in the file's group, with the same values.
chmod doesn't change the permissions of symbolic links; the chmod system call cannot change their permissions on most systems, and most systems ignore permissions of symbolic links. However, for each symbolic link listed on the command line, chmod changes the permissions of the pointed-to file. In contrast, chmod ignores symbolic links encountered during recursive directory traversals. Options that modify this behavior are described in the OPTIONS section.
Copypastes every terminal command string from every forum post they see, hoping one of them fixes the problem
bash: common-sense: command not found
maybe installing fortune will help
"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 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
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
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.
Nice! Just gonna piggyback and recommend https://tldr.sh/ too. I use it all the time!
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.
Sometimes I try to quit my browser with :q or try to send emails with :wq
Dude. Warn me before saying something like that. I'm too high for this... Lol
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.
How about using tealdeer?
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.
tldr is good for this.
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).
Thihi and sooner or later they all end up at the arch linux wikis.
Same outcome even if you read man pages
Some mans are unreadable. I've been curling cheat.sh/[command] and its been great for example commands. Highly recommend.
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
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.
If you want to really learn what you're doing, try info coreutils
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.
what the fuck is a man page
whatis man
Don't forget the HEAVY Indian accent
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.
ctrl-shift-v | yes
Hint: :q!
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