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.

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

How about using tealdeer?

Or make

I find them very useful for programs that I already know what to use them for otherwise I usually consult the arch wiki.

Enter tldr and navi

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.

For those that didn’t pick it up, this is sarcasm

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.

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.

“How to do X on Y?” “Why would you ever want to do X? Do Z instead!”

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.

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 ®, 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.

cht () {
    curl cht.sh/$1
}

You can stick this in your .bashrc or .bash_profile. Then just do cht <command to use> and it’ll give you the most relevant info to use the command.

Ie. cht tar

this is why tldr is so good

bash: common-sense: command not found

Such people are the main targets of rm -rf trolls.

literally the only reason I installed nano

Nice! Just gonna piggyback and recommend https://tldr.sh too. I use it all the time!

This definitely needs an alias overriding man lol

You just blew my MF mind.

This is cool. Thanks for sharing it.

I also like tldr for new commands. Sometimes I discover new ways by using it on the commands I know…