linuxmemes

Most people don’t even read the error messages. They’re never gonna read a whole manual.

My biggest annoyance with man pages are that built-ins are a separate command and that there is no way to print all man pages but the first with the man command. That's right. There's no way to print every page for a command, 1 through 7 or whatever, with a flag. I am confidently saying there's no way to do it.

For appliances at least, 95% of "the manual" today is useless CYA safety disclosures in 17 different languages. Manuals today rarely contain useful information.

Here

for application in /usr/bin/*; do man $application; done

get going

I mean in general, "read things -> learn" is a good approach to life imo.

try to RTFM for Microsoft...lol shits updated too much and all the old information is still there and outdated. convoluted mess of shit is all they are

still, RTFM...always

A skill that will be out sourced to AI.

Y'all not just out there vibe OSing?

Agreed. I've saved so much money by RTFM. As a father of three kids, every dollar saved means a better life for my family.

Car broken? RTFM, bought an ODBII scanner, and fixed it.

Need air conditioning? RTFM and installed my own heat pumps in my house, saving $7000 in labor and markup.

House has an old 60 amp fuse panel? Paid an electrician for the service upgrade, read the NEC, wired and installed all branch circuits and sub panels myself. Passed inspection. Saved $7500.

When you take the time to learn something, you not only get the satisfaction of using your own hands to accomplish something, but you also get to save money.

RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community. I don't mind reading the manual, but perhaps you can point me to where in the manual I could get further insight.

Reading a manual is also a skill. Being able to compartmentalize manual info into buckets of "obvious and I don't need to read on", "could be helpful", "interesting, but it gets there I ain't touching it" takes either training or just getting lucky after a certain number of reps.

I mean this is true and yes but in an age where documentation is increasingly terrible, the idea of a service manual for something you bought is basically a foreign concept, and half the shit you buy doesn’t come with a meaningful manual does it really apply the same way?

Like sure, knowing the post error codes on my motherboard or linux stuff is possible because it’s documented. But the appliance example? That is increasingly false and those manuals are increasingly becoming 5 page idiot guides: “here is how to turn the system on and off, here is how to turn heat up/down, contact authorized vendor for issues” and if you don’t do that then you void your warranty. Any more robust documentation is locked to “authorized vendors” and costs $$$, if it even exists (and doesn’t just say “replace system when it stops working correctly)

I work in IT. I've read so many manuals that I don't need to read manuals almost ever.

As soon as you learn the design language for stuff, it usually just makes sense where to find stuff and how to fix it. It's rare that I have a problem that I can't solve just by looking at it.

If I ever get stuck, guess what? I RTFM. That's basically my job. I RTFM because end users can't be arsed to do it themselves. If everyone read the manual, I'd be out of a job.

i could be reading some fucking manuals right now instead of lemmy...

Video games trained millennials to do this. NES, Sega, SNES, even Atari games very often told you real shit in the manual. They were written to be read and contain training material. There were no tutorials other than reading and trail and error.

The idea that manuals in linux are a good way to learn and understand new software is peak linux neckbeard bs, and I will die on this hill. I congratulate OP on the exact type of autism that lets them feel this is an effective and useful method for learning new software, but if there is desire to have a greater adoption of linux maybe its bad to be snarky at folks for not instantly understand the terminal based documentation conventions of some dudes in the 70s. Maybe an alphabetical* list of all possible options is okay for referencing or searching, but is objectively insane way to learn or understand a problem.

I think a lot of documentation just fly over my head. I have a masters degree in mathematics, but so many manuals have such deeply ingrained "tribal" language that everyone takes for granted that you know.

If you have a good starting point for a poor linux noob to read manuals, hit me up.

(That being said, I DO read the manuals for appliances and all that. THAT stuff is luckily easy)

One of my pet peeves is how many new things do not come with a manual and I have to go and find one. I am one of the fortunate ones who can learn by reading and then trying. It seems that many cannot.

Part of the fun of buying a game was getting to RTFM on the way home.

I once read the first 3 chapters of the Git book and my coworkers think I'm some kind of Git wizard

I take RTFM more broadly to mean that I at least put in some effort to solve the problem myself. I googled, checked forum posts, read the man page, opened a config file or two and read some comments, etc. So I get offended when I get RTFM'd.

If you can't reply without being a dick, then keep scrolling! Why participate in a forum where people with less experiece ask questions in the first place? That time could be better spent reading your shop vac manual or figuring out who you need to blow to save $700 on a dishwasher repair.

God yes. I absolutely LOVE a well written manual.

Even if you THINK you know how a thing works, it’s always good to find out the quirks and gotchas, not to mention functionality that might not be obvious at first glance.

In fact, I read the manuals before buying an item or piece of software. They tend to be much more enlightening about a product’s limitations than the marketing material is.

Conversely, it really annoys the fuck out of me when people come on forums and ask a really basic question that’s answered on page 2 of the manual. It shows that someone is incredibly lazy and incapable of basic problem solving. And they have the audacity to get offended when you tell them it’s covered in the manual.

I work in maintenance, people act like I’m doing magic, but 90% of the time all I’ve done is read the fucking manual, the other 10% is just basic awareness.

Lol. That's exactly what I did in the early 90s. ls /usr/bin, then man at, or whatever it was that came first, and work onwards from there.
Moreso when I installed my own Unix machine (briefly Minix, quickly replaced by Linux) and had to actually learn how to manage it.

But then I came from a mix of 8 bit, PC and semi big iron (Tandem) culture where any machine you used would matter of factly come with a litteral wall of binders containing documentation for pretty much anything (which led to the fun regular "documentation day" where you had to manually "patch" the documentation by replacing pages in all the binders with updated ones).
Anyway knowing what the fuck you were doing was pretty much expected. So everyone spent a lot of time perusing documentation.

Of course nowadays, to read documentation, you first have to find it, which can be quite a challenge in itself. But at least the manpages are still there.

copypasta levels

After a while it's basically muscle memory so you don't have to go digging as much. OpenBSD's are my favorite. So well-written.

I've been using Linux for about a year now, I have no clue what is even in /usr/bin ....you people have manuals?! I needed a manual to find the thing.

I read the manuals for everything now. I think it's because when I was a kid videogames used to come with great manuals and half the fun was just reading through those. One of my favourites was for the original Heavy Gear on PC. that thing was like a hybrid manual and lore bible. Or old Flight Sim games with manuals that were as thick as text books.

Now you don't get shit.

I just learned about "man thing" in terminal a couple days ago. I had no idea they're kept in that folder.

I don't Linux (yet), but I do work in Audio Production. I LIVE for good manuals. I always read them, and because of that, I'm always working from a starting line of intelligence with new gear. I keep manuals in pdf format on my computer in like borderline autistic order. RTFM is the best piece of advice anyone can have, ever.

I hardly think memorizing every useless fact in a manual and blowing the technician is the best way to learn. In Linux I encounter problems and seek the answers then I know how to apply this knowledge in the future. This isn’t dynastic China where we must memorize the five great books (/usr/bin, fridge, stove, furnace, and the analects) in order to progress in life.

My folks bought a new EV recently and my dad was unable to figure anything out for days. I hopped in and was doing everything he wanted in minutes.

"How the hell did you do all that‽"

"I RTFM Dad"

I think LBD is the other half of it. If you have the confidence to try and fix or build something you Learn By Doing it. That eventually compounds and you could pretty much do anything. Maybe takes a bit longer than a professional would do it. A great shortcut would be to RTFM