Hint: :q!
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Clarification: Just making fun of people(including myself) who watch shitty videos instead of official documentation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
These are the same people who later on complain about Linux being shit because it just breaks
bash: common-sense: command not found
maybe installing fortune will help
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
"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.
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.
This definitely needs an alias overriding man lol
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
That's a browser extension worth building
Dude. Warn me before saying something like that. I'm too high for this... Lol
I do that occasionally when.I don't want to lose/scroll back to the output currently in my terminal (or I want to refer to it while reading the manpage)
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.
Same outcome even if you read man pages
A lot of man pages suck ass.
Except openBSD ones, they should be the standard of quality for user documentation.
Consider this, nearly every major distro (and some minor distros like Alpine) has a wiki (or is based on a Distro that does).
If you want to really learn what you're doing, try info coreutils
what the fuck is a man page
Don't forget the HEAVY Indian accent
ctrl-shift-v | yes
I had to run this command once, not for the faint of heart, and takes about as long as a full OS reinstall...
sudo aptitude reinstall '~i'
This command reinstalls all registered packages on a Debian based distro, including Ubuntu and Mint.
Was totally worth it though, it kept all my files and config intact, and repaired all the packages that Timeshift borked up (my experience with Timeshift was BAD!)