Comment on I'm guilty of not reading the f..ing documentation
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
Man pages tend to assume a lot and overload the user with information.
Forums are full of “duh, haven’t you read the man pages, idiot?” kinds of people.
Web searches are full of AI/garbage (same thing) articles that focus on distros/programs that are either horrendously inaccurate, out of date, or simply don’t exist anymore.
Therefore, I use tldr man pages and use extremely specific terms for web searches.
Broadfern@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Oh thank hell it’s not just me. Every so often I retry the man command only to get frustrated having to flip through six walls of text via keyboard for something a 20 second Internet search would have easily refreshed my memory on.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
Bingo.
And even then it’s difficult to find shit, like for instance, finding the working directory for
crontabwhen run as root. This answer on Stack Overflow is the embodiment of my second example in the other comment. The answer goes into great detail, references the man pages, and still doesn’t answer the question in any reasonable capacity for a “standard user” like myself.bigredgiraffe@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Oh it is certainly not just you, I am sometimes confused reading them even for commands I have used for years and I know what flag I am looking for but don’t remember the exact syntax or something hah! I am glad they are there but they are definitely not a complete guide to any command, especially built-ins.
Interestingly, this is something AI has been very useful for to me, less searching because I can describe the outcome I want and it figures out what I am talking about generally.