RTFM is Sage
8mon 18d ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/miss_demeanour in linuxmemes from lemmy.dbzer0.com
Most people don’t even read the error messages. They’re never gonna read a whole manual.
Most people were conditioned by more "user-friendly" systems to ignore the content of error messages because only an expert can make sense of "Error: 0x8000000F Unknown Error". So they don't even try, and that's how they put themselves in a Yes, do as I say! situation.
It’s not even obscure, context dependent errors. I’ve had many professional system administrators not understand what “connection was closed by peer” meant.
Well, to be fair, I'm also not very well versed in the intricacies of connecting with British nobility.
Have you tried turning the rape island off and on again?
One day I'll catch that jerk Peer! So rude, always closing my connections!
It's very much on brand for Peer, at least in the beginning of the play https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_Gynt
More than once I had trouble calls about an "error message" that basically said "everything is fine, click ok to proceed"
In the admins defense. "Closed by peer" can indicate everything from a safe closure to an unsafe closure to a server connection terminating which causes the peer to terminate.
Like that's a fair point of confusion.
What bugs me is when the error says something stupid specific and obvious such as JavaScript heap out of memory or dd: error writing *pathname*: No space left on device
Yeah, but they literally couldn’t tell me if it’s a problem with the network or something else. It’s like it’s in a totally different language
yea thats fully understandable. also no idea why this post just showed in my feed, didn't mean to revive a 4 month old comment 😅
That’s the beauty of the fediverse :)
But most error messages are in plain English first (plus some numbers and codes).
No, they see white (gray actually) blocky text on a black background, they think the machine is broken and go into panic mode. Instead of reading.
Which is kinda what you said.
But most error messages are in plain English first
Nah. Most error messages today are: System unavailable. Try again later. or Something went wrong. :( [Contact Support]
(And 'contact support' just takes you to their main support website homepage where you can maybe search something up on their janky search engine from the 10,000 useless 'articles' on their support site. Or you can talk to an AI chatbot that hallucinates a solution for you that sounds correct, but actually doesn't work.)
I don't need to make sense of error messages. Which is good because I usually can't.
I just need them copy/pasteable cuz that shit is going in Google and I'd rather not manually type it.
People who don't read error messages or do not take the time to see what is going on and just come to the technician/mechanic/doctor saying "it doesn't work" or some half-assed hypothesis piss me off so bad.
I know that at some point we all do a little of this in our lifes, but some people don't seem to be able to read one goddamn paragraph ever.
but some people don't seem to be able to read one goddamn paragraph ever.
I had a problem with my car. It felt strange while driving. Made some unusual noise. Then a bit later the motor warning light came on.
I went to the garage, told them about the warning light and what I noticed the time before, what I suspected and such. A short while after the mechanic came to me and asked for a few details, as my description "wasn't helpful" and the repair would be much faster with more details that told them where to look etc. Turns out the guy who checked in my car only noted "a warning light is on" and nothing else of my ramblings.
So sometimes it's also paying attention to what might be important and relaying information.
ah well, then that is them being stubborn and being unable to troubleshoot.
To be fair, I forgot an important bit of context. I was on vacation abroad when my car broke on a Friday afternoon. Our hotel room was only available until Saturday morning as everything was booked out for the weekend because of a huge event in the city. They asked me just to get a first indication and not waste time with random troubleshooting, so that I could get home and get everything checked completely with a more relaxed schedule.
From my view, it was a sensible thing to do. But the literal translation on their report they showed me was just "the warning light is lit" - not even which (though that is quite obvious, when you start the engine)
To be fair 'warning light is lit' is all the mechanic needs to know in a lot of circumstances.
Most of the time, the warning light comes on because the engine's computer has logged an error code. The mechanic just plugs his code reader in to find out what the code is and then looks up what it means. And ~90% of the time, the engine's computer does a pretty good job of telling the mechanic what's wrong.
(For example, if it gives a code for "Cylinder #4 misfire", then the mechanic knows he should probably check the spark plug and coil for cylinder #4. And if those seem fine, get out the compression tester and test the compression of cylinder #4. And without any additional information from the customer besides 'warning light is lit', that's probably enough for him to find the cause of the problem.)
To be fair, techs don't usually talk to the people who can read, so they're only ever going to see idiots. There are competent people in the world, they'll just never need your help, so you don't see them.
Last time I called tech support, it was for a Dell, and I interrupted their speech to tell them I already looked up the diagnostic. They asked which numbers were lit on the error panel to confirm I had the right diagnostic, and passed me directly to who I needed to talk to. I only called tech support because the cpu socket died and I was putting in a warranty claim, otherwise they would have never even heard from me because I could just install a new motherboard myself.
edit: speeling
THIS. The people who actually read the error messages aren't going to stop there, they're going to look up said error message, find a solution on their own, and continue with their day without having to interact with another human.
At this point, if a student brings in a laptop, explains what doesn't work, and leaves me to diagnose and fix it, I consider it a good report because it means that the student didn't get any overconfident ideas. If a student also explains what they were doing when a thing failed, I'm giving them preferential treatment.
Then there are comp-sci students who attempted something. I had one who disassembled their laptop and tore a ribbon cable. I had one who plugged in a random mis-matched RAM stick that turned out to be busted and wondered why Windows kept crashing. I had one who completely fucked up the registry. I had one who wanted to install Ubuntu for dual booting and accidentally wiped the entire SSD.
I would rather spend an hour babysitting their computers than an entire afternoon un-fucking something they thought they could handle. If it were up to me, I would restrict the crap out of their user accounts, but the faculty leaders insist, against empirical evidence, that they're smart enough.
Are these laptops provided by the faculty?
In any case I do not mind so much the "I should try to fix this on my own first". If it's your own device and accept the risks/consequences. But if it is a work/university provided laptop then it makes no sense to attempt to fix it on one's own.
I can feel your pain trying to fix/repair something you have to figure out what kind of stupid stuff was done to the device.
They're provided by the faculties at the university's expense, but the students have admin rights and very little supervision. Two fairly expensive laptops have been stolen by exchange students during the three years I've worked there -- they simply never bothered to return them, and we only realized it during the yearly inventory check. But fixing the asset tracking system (or implementing one in the first place) is not what I'm getting paid for.
I'm more surprised that your school doesn't go by the "Wipe and reimage" policy. Most every school now uses some form of cloud service. No reason to spend time troubleshooting when you can just do a stock image and have the student sign in again
but the faculty leaders insist, against empirical evidence, that they’re smart enough.
To be fair, you're only seeing the dumb ones.
If that user-installed RAM stick had worked, they wouldn't have come to you about it.
If they had installed their dual boot Ubuntu setup correctly, they wouldn't come to you about it.
Presumably, there are a lot of smart students out there fucking with their laptops without breaking them, which you never know about because they never bring those laptops to you to fix. And locking down the computers would prevent those smart students from being able to do the things they want.
I guess I forgot to point out (six months ago, well done) that these are free loaners provided by the university. Usually high-end, current-generation hardware. They can be smart on their own devices, that's neither my concern nor my responsibility, but these are not theirs to disembowel.
They’ll refuse to attempt to understand the problem then get mad when they get ripped off.
What about the fucking manual?
Kama Sutra?
I guess you get good at Unix and refrigerator by reading it, so why not?
Don't fuck the manual!
It's Read The Fucking Manual not Fuck The Reading Manual
They don't.
Undoing self-owns like ignoring available information is the basis for 40% of the economy.
And because people don't read error messages, many applications/sites/etc don't even put them, or if they do they either don't have any public facing documentation to actually figure out what that code means, or they do and it might as well be nothing
The error message:
I recently had a coworker who would frequently get an error message while completing their time card. The message was slightly cryptic, something like "invalid cost center", but no indication (in the message) of which line(s). This happened so often, that when they would call me to complain that they were getting an error, I usually already knew what error they were getting, but for some reason, they could never remember the steps to find & correct it and had to call me every time.
that's why any manual worth their salt has a "quick start" section at the beginning (I say this knowing most man pages fail at this or put it at the end which is super unhelpful)
Just give me common uses and flags, you can have your more indepth stuff at the end
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
In order to RTFM one must first WTFM
And FTFM. Find the fucking manual.
And perhaps TTFM. Translate the fucking manual either from broken chinese-english or the tech-lingo + missing context information which is almost every manpage on Linux, making it nearly useless for the average user unless you got hours and hours of time to understand all the adjacent concepts and commands.
Keeping the common user stupid is the better part of Mickeysoft's business model. The proposed solution for every problem is guessing what MS' silly nomenclature might actually mean while poking around in GUIs that do nothing but keep you busy. Then buy something from their app store. RTFM doesn't work in a system that's inconsistent and undocumented by design. That's not the fault of RTFM as a concept but a travesty of it.
Unironically, if you bing Windows API related queries rather than googling them, you're much more likely to find a relevant manual page that answers your question clearly. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is actively worsening Windows-related queries to make Windows look bad and sell Android devices and Chromebooks. Another example is that googling msvcp140.dll not found or similar queries gives you loads of dodgy download this individual DLL here and put it in System32 and we promise we've not tampered with it websites instead of the page for the universal MSVC redistributable installer that's the only supported way to get the DLL (and a bunch of other related ones) as an end user.
As for silly nomenclature, generally on Windows, API functions are much more likely to describe what they do and much less likely to be a town in Wales. If you don't already know what fstat does, it's much easier to guess that GetFileTime would be the right function to get a file's last modification time than fstat, for example.
I have been told that the reason their publically available training, problem solving, and educational material is so terrible is because there is a secret printed guidebook somewhere that makes everything make sense and if everyone had it it could negatively impact the windows economy.
I do not know if that is true, but I have been told it and it does kind of explain why sites like learn.microsoft.com are so terrible that I would rather reread the world book encyclopedia 1969 edition from A to Z including the index than try to figure out how to run a single powershell command from the educational materials available on that site.
Have you tried sfc /scannow?
I just want to say I'm glad other people understand how ridiculous of a suggestion this is for fixing Windows problems. It has become such a low effort nonsensical approach because people don't truly understand what it does and it feels like doing something. It's the new 'have you tried turning it off and on again.' dism and sfc. Then when someone mentions how absurd the thinking is that this fixes anything but a small negligible fraction of issues, someone always chimes in how there was this one time where it worked for them. Perpetuating this low effort, almost useless approach to troubleshooting. I've fixed more issues with BIOS updates than I have with either of those tools.
I've just reinstalled windows every few years to deal with the unfixable issues
Having gotten used to Linux, this comes across as such a bizarre concept.
Like hearing that someone demolishes and rebuilds their house every few years because it's such a shitty house that it keeps developing issues that can't be fixed any other way.
my first go to for fixing every issue I have with a windows component
- sfc /scannow
- dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
the amount of time that last command has fixed a core issue with the system is shocking but god that command takes forever
This is a problem with more than just Microsoft. Any software (game, application, library, whatever) that has had many years of updates some of which are breaking, will have this problem with docs.
Oh you are using version 5.5.24 of xyzlib? All these docs are a mixture of stuff when 4.2.57 was out and stuff someone tried to update when 7.5.14 released.
Microsoft documentation actually sucks information out of your brain and leaves you knowing less than before you read it.
Or the documentation is basically empty and tells you nothing at all (looking at you WinRT…)
MSFT's strategy is anti-documentation.
You want help?
Money Please!
(For clarity, I am being cheeky, but I am not joking.)
It used to be so much worse. The ms docs used to be very spotty, sometimes plain wrong. Apparently now they're a bit of a mess but they're way more complete and, mostly to the point. Luckily I moved away from their stuff ages ago so I don't have to deal with it anymore.
For appliances at least, 95% of "the manual" today is useless CYA safety disclosures in 17 different languages. Manuals today rarely contain useful information.
Until you do like step one of taking an appliance apart, and realize that the real manual is marked "for technician use only", and it's hidden inside of the appliance.
My washer and dryer both have good manuals complete with circuit diagrams under the top once i take a few screws out. My chest freezer has one taped up under the hatch where the compresser sits. My refrigerator has one hidden in the door hinge.
Yeah, my parents were about to throw out an oven that would keep shutting off. I pull it away from the wall and boom, wiring diagram. Take out the ohm meter, figure out that the resistance across the temperature probe went to near zero when steam intruded through a gap in the crimp. 5 dollar part and it was good to go for years to come (the new part was crimped in a simpler, more robust way).
Dishwasher had the service manual taped to the kick plate. It gave me codes to troubleshoot, finding the heating element died.
Ah, yeah, forgot that was another one I've done. It seems like I've taken apart most of my household appliances at this point.
Yup, just got done wiring up an old washer to turn it into a feather plucker using the technician only manual!
You mean actual paper manuals ester-egged inside the appliances themselves? In 2025?
It's more likely than you'd think!
(Most new appliances come with warranties. And if the appliance breaks under warranty, the company will need to pay to send a technician to fix it. The technician may or may not be familiar with that exact appliance. Now, which would be more cost-effective for the company? A: Pay the technician's hourly rate while he spends time trying to look up the manual and the wiring diagram for this exact version and this exact revision of this exact appliance. B: Include a printed manual and wiring diagram inside the appliance's cover that the technician can quickly and efficiently locate. The company often decides Option B is more cost-effective, so they include a manual hidden inside for the warranty repair technician to find. Happily for us, that manual doesn't disappear when the warranty expires.)
The actual manual is usually hidden somewhere on it for repair techs to find. For my oven it was taped on the back.
Yep. I needed the circuit diagram for my microwave to fix an issue with the light (kept blowing out bulbs rapidly). Turned out you have to pull it out of the top inner frame, after unscrewing the button board and top panel. Thankfully, was an easy soldering fix, thyristor blew.
Generally microwaves are amongst the devices I tag as "do not self repair" I lack the confidence in my repair skills to fuck with the machine with giant caps and built in death ray.
If it was a problem with the microwave function I don’t think I’d have bothered. I’m terrible at repairing things and break most things worse than they were before. But it was the lightbulb acting up (the underside one, we’ve got an over-range mounted unit).
In this case I had the circuit diagram and multiple YouTube videos to lean on. Thankfully the thyristor is big, because I’m terrible at soldering, but it worked out.
Discharging capacitors (and anything else that might hold a charge) isn't that hard and dangerous if you know how. I used to work on radar systems with 32KV on big capacitor banks.
1: Connect a thick, beefy wire to a solid and reliable ground connection.
2: Rig up a way to hold that wire in a well-insulated way, so that you have thick, non-conductive insulation between you and the wire, but you can still move it around freely and easily.
3: Firmly touch the tip of that wire to the contacts of any capacitors you can see, any bare metal contacts you can see, and anything else that might be at all dangerous. If in any doubt at all, touch the wire to it. Do it twice, just to be sure you didn't miss any. (There may possibly be sparks when you do this. That's okay -- it means it's working. Do make sure you're not close to anything that's very flammable, though.)
After doing that, everything will be discharged and completely safe to work on.
For something the size of a microwave, you could build a capacitor discharge tool very simply and easily by taking any three-pronged power cord, cutting it in the middle, disconnecting and isolating the two power connections (leaving only the ground connection), leaving a bit of bare wire from the ground wire exposed at the end, and then wrapping your handle area in some extra layers of electrical tape (just in case some of those capacitors have voltages above ~300V). (Or if you want to be ultra-safe, tape a plastic or wooden handle to the wire instead.) Plug that modified 3-prong cable into any standard 3-prong household outlet to connect it to a reliable ground.
If you want to be a bit more professional about it, a grounding wire from an ordinary welder setup should be able to safely discharge just about anything you'd ever encounter.
You obviously have the experience and tbh that might be the best guide I've seen on building a capacitor discharge tool (it might also be the only one, but it seems to make sense). For the sake of completeness I assume I plug in the plug and it's just using the house's earth?
Not sure how possible it is to reassemble it in an unsafe manner with the magnetron in the mix and I'm not sure how much peace of mind I'd have using it afterwards. But I certainly feel a lot happier about discharging big caps now.
For the sake of completeness I assume I plug in the plug and it’s just using the house’s earth?
Yes! Heh, I guess I forgot that part. I should add it in, just in case.
Haha, I thought I better check to be sure. It's such a fantastically straightforward sensible concept for a tool I'm honestly not sure why it's not everywhere vs people shorting caps with a screwdriver.
Crimping a push fit terminal of some sort on the end would make a handy static wrist strap hookup too I'd imagine.
Crimping a push fit terminal of some sort on the end would make a handy static wrist strap hookup too I’d imagine.
Plus, you'd get to see the horrified looks on your friend's faces when they see you plugging your wrist strap into a wall outlet!
Appliance repair in the 20's? WTFY (Watch the fucking Youtube)
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What you need to…
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Ass Ads grass commercials or gas sponsors, nobody rides for free
Honestly I have to disagree. All my recently purchased appliances: microwave, washing machine, dishwasher and induction cooktop, had detailed instruction manuals that were genuinely useful, especially where the finer details aren't obvious from the device itself.
Heck, even my wireless earbuds had a little bit of useful info, like how to force them into pairing mode.
Of course, all those manuals contained those nonsense safety warnings too (and I read every word of course! :P) but that's neither here nor there.
All those safety warnings are useless nonsense, until:
This vacuum is not water resistant and no part of it shall come into contact with water. Do not operate this vacuum on wet floors.
Wash the infuser with water or coffee machine cleaning powder only. Do not wash with soap. Every 6 months, relubricate the seals with food and water safe silicone grease certified with NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 and NSF/ANSI 51.
Well, good to know.
This vacuum is not water resistant and no part of it shall come into contact with water. Do not operate this vacuum on wet floors.
(Which you, of course, find in the manual of your robo-vacuum that runs automatically and has no way to know if the floors are wet or not.)
The troubleshooting section of the manual is almost always useless because it only ever covers user error.
My washer threw a drainage error and the manual suggested I blocked the outlet or had done something daft. I looked up the error code online and 90% of the time it was a failed water pump.
I had to replace the water pump. It was an easy job that required less documentation than a lego set for a 5 year old. You just had to know which screws to loosen to get to the pump. Was it documented? Of course not.
And software doesn't even come with those kinds of manuals anymore.
Some does if you're lucky.
There's sometimes a few Ikea style pictures showing how to put it on a table and plug it in. Which is possibly useful to some.
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 partly disagree with what you say. The subscription appliance garbage absolutely do lock advanced user manuals behind paywalls. But it isn't not rare (at least right now) to still find products with good user manuals. There are usually separate documents with one being a "quick setup" and another being a full "user manual". Avoid the worst offenders and you should be okay.
Becoming increasingly rare and we are speaking on different things. You are talking about a manual that explains how to make your washing machine wash. That is important, yes, but I am talking about a manual that explains how an appliance works.
the days of a manual explaining anything like an error code are basically dead. Name one appliance manufacturer that lists anything beyond the most basic of troubleshooting (“turn it off and back on”)
Like go back and look at an appliance manual from the 70s/80s/maybe 90s and you will see a more robust explanation of what to do when things go wrong. The further back you go the more likely you will see parts numbers, circuit diagrams, or be able to order a service manual that has such information.
We expect this shit level of documentation because we live in a throwaway culture that has tolerated this pisspoor level of documentation for decades. “Oh the washer isn’t working? It’s showing an E-05 error? Guess we better just go buy a new washer” or pay the manufacturer $120 for a “service charge” to find out that code means the latch sensor died and it’s a $30 part that is a simple 5 minute job except you can’t get the part because they won’t sell it to you
My VIC-20 and Commodore 64 came with pinout charts. Every single internal and external connector was labelled.
It's been about 15 years since I did appliance servicing. But back then many of the dryers would still include a circuit diagram with wire color codes and a timing chart for the controller. But the fancier appliances that had digital control boards, touch panels, etc... Like LG and Samsung didn't include crap unless you paid for their service portals. But, what they had behind the pay wall was often fairly detailed with tear down instructions and even full details of circuit boards including each pinout and often even flow charts for diagnostic steps making diagnostics almost dummy proof.
LG would even put on training and we'd get full inch to inch and a half booklets full of service details for a line of their products.
I still would never buy an LG appliance though. There was a reason they had to provide so many service details. Their appliances might have some fancy cushy innovations. But what good are these fancy features when your fridge doesn't cool?
Yeah that’s exactly the problem. I don’t want to pay for access to a service portal to repair my appliance. I’m not a shop, I’m just some person with a busted washing machine. Just sell me the service manual as a pdf (or even better just give it to me since I already gave you a shitload of money for an appliance)
And realistically since 2010 basically all appliances have moved heavily towards digital controls. Microcontrollers everywhere. You can still get stuff without touch controls (for now, even though it’s objectively worse for the disabled it’s easier to clean, “in” with current design trends, and most importantly it’s cheaper to manufacture at scale)
You are talking about a manual that explains how to make your washing machine wash. That is important, yes, but I am talking about a manual that explains how an appliance works.
Many appliances have service manuals and wiring diagrams hidden inside their cover plates somewhere, even today.
Eh. I own a few old tools with manuals, and they actually have diagrams of the inner workings together with part numbers, some even have electrical diagrams with resistor values etc. All of the newer tools have a tiny useless "visit this website for more information" and 50% of the time it's some bs about errors 1-10: restart device, 10-20 please contact a technician because opening the tool voids your warranty. I know dipshit, I don't care about warranty cause I need the tool now or tomorrow, not in 3 months when you tell me it's "unserviceable" or "uneconomical to repair" and I have to buy a new one.
I agree with the fact that there are not thorough diagrams with part numbers and wirijg diagrams like there used to be. A part of it is the fault of the manufacturer, and a part of it is just the way things are made now. Circuit boards are not as simple as they once were to include comprehensive wiring diagrams. They could absolutely break the modules into different boards and label the boards with different part numbers, so rather than replacing a resistor you'd just have to replace that board. It's also not clear to me how many people actually have a comprehensive understanding of the item being sold.
But there is the obvious fact that companies want you to buy another one and not repair it. It's often cheaper for them to not repair the product themselves, and just replace the entire unit. They dont keep a surplus of parts for repairs, nor do they want to spend the man power troubleshooting and fixing the issue. It's just cheaper to replace it entirely. If they themselves will just replace rather than repair why would they bother keeping detailed documentation. If anyone cared for the enviornment more than money, they'd probably do it. But we all know how that goes.
I would also add that even previously they were prioritizing money. It was just cheaper for them to make it repairable, especially if they are going to offer some sort of warranty. It was also good for business since it made customers happy. I think at some point it became cheaper to do it the way we do now
and label the boards with different part numbers, so rather than replacing a resistor you’d just have to replace that board.
Aaaand a replacement board costs 70% as much as just buying a brand new appliance that's under warranty...
LMBO, and sometimes it does come with a service manual, but you have to take the machine apart to find it like with my Samsung Washing machine
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.
Writing a manual is also a skill so starting with good ones help a lot.
Your second point is pretty much the most important skill learned in a humanities PhD, how to make your own learning path and learn what you need to know and what you should avoid.
RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community.
I think there's a low level of "How do I figure this out?" [generic] in which its good advice to ask "Does it say anything about this in the manual?" before you try and tear into a system as a third party giving advice.
I also think "I read the manual on my refrigerator" is some "I dare you to prove me wrong" horseshit. On the one hand, people don't do this for a reason. Refrigerators simply aren't that complicated to use. And the manual is rarely a smooth read, even for professionals. So its good advice, but not practical advice, better than half the time.
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.
Also, just a matter of free time and mental calories to burn. And hey, maybe if you're a hobbyist who is hip deep in your Linux kernel because you eat this shit up, its the place you should have started. But also, Jesus Christ, maybe I just want a Mint instance to run a Jellyfin server. I'm not trying to get my master's degree in this shit.
- It's not impossible to learn if you read the manual. That's how I learned.
- If you need my help cos you can't figure it out, pay me. I don't work for free.
- If you're not paying me, I don't owe you anything.
If you need my help cos you can’t figure it out, pay me
It's so funny to see this on a sub dedicated to FOSS. Trying to imagine how many Pull Requests come with a bill attached.
There's a difference between helping out people who are interested in, and capable of learning, improving, contributing to something...
... and people who just want thing work, and are also almost always unwilling to put literally any thought into this process.
'User Support' and 'Collaborative Development' are not the same thing.
There's also 'the computer guy' syndrome, where a group of people just expect a seemingly infinite amount of uncompensated time and mental effort from 'the computer guy' to solve all their problems, who then take this for granted, and become hostile and offended when you tell them 'sorry, don't have the time', when 'the computer guy' has the audacity to... want to do something else at that moment.
So much this
FOSS doesn't mean "we think people that make software should work for free because we like free shit". It means:
-
When you want to modify something someone else made to your benefit you should recognize the work they did for you and pay it back in the form of contributing those changes back to the project. Beyond that, it also benefits you directly because someone else might build on your improvements (well, that, but also its easier to stop your changes from breaking in new versions of the software if other people are aware of them). Like the other commenter said, its communal development, sure lots of people do it at least partly because they want to make the world a better place, but the primary reason it works is because the various parties mutually benefit from mutual cooperation.
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The belief that you should have complete control over your own computer, which you can't do in practice without being able to view the source code of the software you run.
FOSS doesn't mean "we think people that make software should work for free because we like free shit".
What ingrained, unexamined immersion in capitalism does to a mofo.
And yet you're here, posting about it, presumably for free?
Or did someone pay you for this post?
This is the only comment I’ve seen in here that I’ve seen address this. The whole concept of RTFM is reactionary and ridiculous. That kind of thinking and behavior kept me at arm’s length from the Linux/tech community for many years. Still kinda does.
Fortunately this kind of thinking slowly but surely gets defeated, although we still have to fight for every inch of user-friendliness (and even modern security concepts) against elitists.
Unfortunately right now most documentation is still crap for average users, and people who keep repeating bullshit like "it's better to provide CLI commands because they're universal" (actual nonsense people keep saying) don't make it better. The situation is so phenomenally bad that I'd outright assume Mistral AI with "Reflection" on to be more useful to newcomers when looking for solutions (on case a friendly professional or enthusiast isn't available), because that thing is less likely to provide an outdated command for the wrong distro than a google search. Which is an absolutely abysmal place to be in for Linux as a whole if we want to keep the rising adoption train going.
I’m glad to hear it’s changing for the better but I lost my patience with these techie dumbfucks a long time ago. If people respond with anger or impatience at technical questions, I tell them they deserve to be publicly executed.
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.
I mean, how else were you ever going to figure that out?
Really, the manuals where they made it fun are the best.
If I ever make a game I'm including at least 7 pieces of deep lore in the manual and one clue that you would only figure out by rtfm
And in a matter of a few hours a single guy will have read the manual, figured out the clue and put it on a wiki or a Reddit post so that none of your other players have to rtfm
Every manual is personalized
Personalized, matched to that specific instance of the game, and the clue gets the Star Tropics treatment but with paper that dissolves after 60 seconds.
Back in the day, DRM was handled like this. I had an indy 500 game where the manual contained a bunch of hiatory of the sport and in order to launch the game, you had to answer indy 500 history trivia questions.
Other games had a symbol alphabet (or some other mapping between images and information it could put on the screen) where the key was only contained in the manual (or on a piece of paper that came with the game).
King's Quest VI had riddles that needed to be answered in a symbol alphabet. You could play the game without doing this but you couldn't beat it.
A mickey mouse game had a paper that was dark brown with black ink (so photocopiers would fail to copy it) with Mickey in various poses and you had to find the number for the one shown on screen to play.
My childhood family computer had the old D&D games from the gold box where you had a wheel you had to pull out and align it every single time you played to get the code symbol to put in in order to play the game.
In retrospect, that was kind of cool, even if it's diabolical.
I remember Street Fighter II asked for page x, paragraph y word z. Once it even pointed to the German section of the manual where the word "mitten" was used. I found that clever. You can't just copy the English part.
Also, Leisure Suit Larry did something similar, and they sold more copies of the manual than they sold of the game.
Im really sad that there are no longer manuals in games, and half the time or more it seems nothing has or comes with manuals anymore
You might look into some Zachtronics games. Both ExaPunks and Shenzhen I/O require their paper manual counterparts to be played.
Also TIS-100, the one no one talks about since Shenzhen I/O came out. :(
TIS-100 Sits unfinished in my library as one of the most esoteric and difficult puzzle games I've ever played. It breaks my mind thinking about it.
Tunic is rtfm the game
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Manuals were needed because they contained information that was missing from the games. Since that time, game design principles have evolved, and most of what used to be in game manuals was eventually included in the games themselves in a semi-diegetic manner. For example, the Codex in Mass Effect, or the books in various Larian games.
Player training is another aspect that has evolved beyond needing a written summary. Half-Life 2 is an excellent example. The player's attention is drawn to a demonstration of a mechanic, then they are gated until they solve a simple puzzle involving that mechanic, then a more complex puzzle involving previously learned mechanics. For example: the player sees an energy ball in a socket activating a bridge; then the player has to launch an energy ball into an empty socket; then the player has to bounce an energy ball off a wall to reach an empty socket. Other great examples are Soul Reaver 1, Dishonored, and obviously, Portal.
I'm not against the idea of supplementary printed material, as long as it remains supplementary. If printed material is required* to make a game playable, then it's a failure of game design.
* obviously excludes the other extreme end of the spectrum where reading printed material is an integral part of the gameplay, like various Zachtronics games.
Or you miss something from the one time tutorial and go through a ton of the game not knowing you can do a certain thing. Then you watch some YouTube video where someone does that thing and you’re like FUCK I COULD HAVE BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG!
Psh. As a kid in a post-soviet country I hadn't seen a game manual up until PS3 days. Every single cartridge and disc sold there was just that. Best case scenario in a flimsy plastic case that would disintegrate in a couple of years. Had to rawdog the shit out of those games. Pure trial and error and perseverance.
Stuck? Try every possible button combination in every location that makes any sense.
For example, couldn't finish Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure on Mega Drive (Genesis) because I didn't know you can jump off walls. Finished it earlier this year though 🙃
Not to brag, but my brother and I passed the garage test mission in Driver (PS1) as kids. Now that I think about it, I should put it on my resume.
Psh. As a kid in a post-soviet country I hadn’t seen a game manual up until PS3 days.
we were lucky if we or family members in the house could speak enough english to know what the fuck was even on screen.
Yeah, that was the case early on. But because of that problem we were very incentivized to learn English. Which we did pretty fast.
Which also proves the point that a manual isn't preventing anything.
I'm not sure I understand. What point?
Sorry, someone else had suggested that a manual that was necessary to knowing how the game works was some sort of way to try and prevent piracy. Which is just not sensible. Pirates gonna pirate.
They are right, it was used for that. Sometimes some key information for progress would be in the manual or on the box. Luckily it wasn't super popular on consoles, due to the notion that it wasn't as easy to pirate on consoles as it was on home computers, where you could just copy the floppy/CD.
I think that was really more in the Atari days, right? Some of them have technical steps like jump switches.
I'm aware of some DOS games that did it. For example 1989 Prince of Persia had you enter the exact character (page, line, word) from the manual.
On PS1 you'd probably never complete Metal Gear Solid (1998), cause you need to call somebody on the codec, but the frequency was on the box cover.
I think it also functioned as an anti piracy measure
If someone in the 80s or 90s was going to the trouble of copying roms onto new boards and making plastic enclosures, then photocopying a little booklet really isn't that much of a heavy lift.
Atari? Millennials?
Part of the fun of buying a game was getting to RTFM on the way home.
public transit, ftw... unless "I wish I died pecefully like my grandfather... the driver who was RTFMing, instead of his screaming passengers"
Last time I could buy a game with an instruction manual I was lucky that I could ride in a car without a car seat.
I once read the first 3 chapters of the Git book and my coworkers think I'm some kind of Git wizard
One of the first things I did at my first full time job (while my very under prepared boss was looking for "junior-dev-friendly" tasks for me to work) was go to git-scm.com and just read through all the man pages I could. I spent a few days doing that, then my boss asked me to create a PowerPoint and present what I learned to the team. It was instantly apparent that I was the only one who knew anything beyond git commit -a on the team at that point, and I was promptly appointed the "title" of "source control SME". I've been heading up version control best practices for every team I've been on since (which is scary because the git cli has changed quite a bit since I read all those man pages but I haven't had a chance to go back and refresh my knowledge).
Do you have a blog or something? Do you write about your experiences regarding this?
Lol no, the most writing I do is comments on Lemmy
These days I just ask llm to fork me a branch and whatever else I need :p
Literally same 💀
I mean in general, "read things -> learn" is a good approach to life imo.
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.
You might be thinking of info pages. The man pages are just the instructions, feature flags, etc. generally, while info (when available) usually has a more general / layman description of the command with examples.
It's possible. A lot of things merge the info and man pages now if both are installed, that could be the case here. Or Mac just documents it further.
as a professional sociotechnical problem solver I will join you on this fatal hill
like take the 4 types of documentation in diátaxis
man pages usually fulfill the reference need, and sometimes kind of that of how-to guides if you're lucky and your local man has examples
but that leaves more than 50% of documentation needs lacking
and discoverability is atrocious -- you have to already know that the command (or commands) you need exists and what it's called
one of the most useful things I learned in a linux sysadmin course was apropos / man -k, which lets you search installed man pages by keyword. but hardly anyone else seems to know about it -- I only learned of it because a teaching assistant mentioned it off hand! -- and even then it only helps if you guess the right keyword for your problem
I am vexed by this situation
People don't know about man -k because of all the man pages they should have read, they forgot the man one.
I think it should be the default if you don't use parameters. A little usage help and the list of commands (with a "do you want to see the list of commands? (Y/n)" message)
There's other ways to get info. And man pages are a great way to learn how something is expected to work on your system. And it's offline, without ads, scams, ai generated false info.
Name calls people who read documentation.
Does not offer any alternative.
"No John, you are the neckbeards!"
I use the neckbeard to destroy the neckbeard
It's a good thing there are other resources, then. You can read tldr-pages. You can look at various official and unofficial wikis. You can look at Stackoverflow. You can look at Youtube tutorials. You can ask other people. Hell, you can ask a chatbot.
If the average user is unwilling to do that, maybe it's better that Linux does not see a wider adoption.
is the fact that people can with effort and error figure out how to do something a reason not to make it easier for them to do?
I mean
you can in theory write multi-threaded bug-free C code -- just read the docs and the specs and the source of your libs and never ever do something that seems to work but is subtly fatally incorrect
and yet we still have golang and rust and many other options to do things more safely and easily
if someone wants to use Linux but doesn't want to memorize the Hundred Mandatory Commands and Thousand Flags lest they accidentally cat > /dev/sda, why shouldn't there be a system for them?
The community abhors change. Especially changes that break conventions, even informal ones. Look at the temper tantrums people are throwing because Wayland does things differently from X.org. Changing output redirection in Bash, or how dd works, or any number of long-standing conventions because new users are unwilling to adapt to a new system and might end up dding over the root partition would break established workflows, and worse, existing scripts and services.
But the solution already exists, it's called wrapper programs. You don't have to manually update AUR packages because yay and paru already do that. You don't have to figure out how fdisk and mkfs work because Gparted and Partition Manager do it for you.
Nevertheless, using a system should always and forever be the user's responsibility. Otherwise Linux would turn into a locked-down play pen like Apple products.
Agreed! You can look elsewhere, and that's how I, and I think many other folks, learned. The OP was talking about the manuals though, specifically mentioning /usr/bin. So to restate my point is not to say it's impossible to learn linux, but that man pages are weird and bad place to push folks looking to learn.
initially when I was learning linux. I had troubles finding the command I needed. I could have first gone and read everything and then come back to try, which I did. But sometimes the man pages, the ubuntu and arch forums weren't as great of a help as messing up myself.
Could there be a better way to document with slightly more examples: yes. Would it help: tons
But this is just my opinion, and I am just a noob
THIS. I feel like linux man pages are as useful as an Analytical mechanics textbook for someone who just wants to drive. Like yes, sure, it's amazing we have such a detailed documentation but for God's sake just introduce basic usages first
but for God’s sake just introduce basic usages first
And include practical examples!
Much easier to figure out the correct formatting of some command by just seeing the formatting used properly!
It's also a great place to sneakily introduce the most common and useful ways to use the command, by including those as the examples! (Are you documenting, say, a command to compress images and documents, and even though most people never use it for video, you want people to know that it works with some video formats as well? Then include compressing .mp4 file as one of your example commands!)
ssh connects and logs into the specified destination, which may be specified as either [user@]hostname or a URI of the form ssh://[user@]hostname[:port]
ssh [admin@]192.168.1.1
ssh: Could not resolve hostname ]192.168.1.1: No address associated with hostname
That's how I would interpret that part of the man page had I no familiarity with ssh. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect the reader to know what those brackets mean.
Agreed, and I think a larger part of it is that most folks pick it up based on context after long enough, so it's rarely explained. The square brackets are optional arguments. So I could use ssh 192.168.1.1 or ssh postimo@192.168.1.1 with the first asking for the account after I connect, and the second just asking for the password. You can see how the computer took it in the response you got. hostname ]192.168.1.1 being it saw the @ and assumed everything after was the hostname and included the ]
It's worth noting that you can't just connect to a random machine like this, they need to also be running an ssh server. But I wouldn't expect you to know that without reading a great deal more of the documentation 🫠
You get to learn the notation conventions with <> and [] fairly early on. Maybe a very new user would make that mistake. If he doesn't get it fairly quick, maybe computers aren't for him.
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.
It's literally all this, all the way down until the turtles.
Holds manual
Squints
Turtles
🦋 is this… Turtle Power?
Wasn't it just one turtle down there?
Nah, it’s turtles all the way down.
I was thinking Pratchett.
Does reading medicine books count too? Since we're all driving human bodies 24/7? Or is it just turtles down to the bottom of the tech layer.
100% yes. Where there is no Doctor or basically the owner's manual and operation guide.
Its fucking impossible to get new kids to read the manual. They just resort to asking others for stuff they could look up. When I was new I asked the old timers as a last resort. Not because they'd be mean about it, but because I know I wouldn't learn as well just being handed information.
It’s not a generational thing, I’ve worked with folks from all age ranges, old timers are just as bad about it as younger people and those from my age range, you’ve either got it or you don’t. Stupidity and arrogance are human traits, not generational ones.
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 too, work in audio production, and keep a meticulously organized folder of manuals. I love products that still ship with a physical printed manual, especially the spiral bound ones.
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.
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 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.
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"
"Reading! Kids, nowadays (sigh)."
Wow, didn't think I'd see an interrobang in the wild!
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.
When you were partying
I read the fucking manual.
When you were having premarital sex
I mastered reading the fucking manual.
While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity
I cultivated READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.
And now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help?
You RTFM to have a sense of superiority over those that don’t
I RTFM to avoid having to talk to another person
We are not the same
Does your manual contain a chapter about barbarian invasions?
Whose doesn't?
My internet is broken. Can you have a look?
Can't have friends asking you for help if you don't have friends.
devdocs.io is beloved.
I don't bother with manuals any more. I never manage to retain much information unless I need it right now. Way easier to just fumble along and find what I need when I need it and cobble together a half-baked "understanding".
Should go get some ADHD meds one day.
TLDR should be installed on every operating system ever. https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr
Tealdeer is a good choice too as it's a faster implementation of tldr, written in Rust:
https://github.com/tealdeer-rs/tealdeer
RTFM
this joke is way older than HTML
Here
for application in /usr/bin/*; do man $application; done
get going
Hey someone that reads the manual. As someone who makes manuals that makes me happy.
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.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here with my ADHD brain that is unable to read the first two sentences of a manual without losing focus and thinking about 15 other things and marveling at those can actually get through something like that and have it stick in their brain longer than 5 minutes.
The trick with my ADHD brain is to refer to documentation when I'm hyperfocused on how the thing works for some reason. It doesn't have to be because it's broken, but it could be, lol.
For me, it's only when it's broken.
To be fair, that is a great point in time to be RTFM.
This is of course assuming you still have it. It's times like those that I thank the gods that a lot of manuals are being hosted online these days.
Oh, reading a manual is a very involved process for me. First, I'll put the task in my bullet journal, then I'll postpone it to the next week, then to the month, then to the next month. And then, if I feel lucky, I'll bring it back into my daily log, and postpone it a few more days before getting annoyed with writing it down so many times that it could fill a full page, and finally reading it.
Y'all not just out there vibe OSing?
A manual killed my parents.
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.
I'll read the manual after it stops working. There are 10 pages of "warning: don't microwave your cat" and 10 pages of what obvious buttons do and if I'm lucky 3 pages of fault codes that in the worst case scenario I'll see one of them the next 10 years.
Sometimes customers pay me to troubleshoot what other vendors sold them, I find the manual for their model number and basically flick through it until I find something.
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
Yeah, this sure resonates with me. When I started with Linux to set up anything you had to RTFM. I remember constantly reading some "Linux printing How-To" or "Linux Wi-Fi How-To". It definitely stayed with me. If I buy something and it has a manual I'm reading it. Just in case.
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)
I just learned about "man thing" in terminal a couple days ago. I had no idea they're kept in that folder.
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'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.
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.
linuxlunatics is almost a genre of its own
I read the manual for every appliance I have. I do man and help even before using the command. I look for multiple articlse explaining the how and why before doing something new with my computer and yet when I look for help many tech people are condescendingly telling me to read the doc. Well, I did. But I don't understand, because I coudn't grasp the concept, because english isn't my mother tongue, because many doc are written by great technician with poor writing skills that are bad pedagogues, and I would like someone to answer my question.
English is my mother tongue and I still have issues with reading some manuals because they're written by bad pedagogues using jargon phrases that mean nothing, or worse, mean something completely different from a basic English reading of those words in that order.
Let's not forget there is a lot of documentation written english by people who are not as fluent as they wish they be.
Half of US adults can't read at a 6th grade level. This is haunting.
Some strikingly high percentage can't complete complicated tasks on a computer (eg: find 3 user email addresses and add them to a spreadsheet).
Reading the manual is good advice but I think some people are just left behind
I feel like a big problem is that a lot of people never learned how to learn.
Adding onto your examples, I've also heard about a study once where they were given similar basic Excel tasks. However, you didn't even have to solve the tasks. Instead, just trying to get help from the help function or searching online got you into the highest skill bracket. That bracket ended up being the smallest group.
Never forget what they took from us.
copypasta levels
Sorry, I have a chronic medical condition that makes reading manuals physically painful, which prevents me from reading the manual until I encounter a problem that requires me to read it, at which point I will have likely discarded it. And if I haven't, I will only read through the part that contains the information I need to know to solve the problem and then immediately forget it after.
now people just "ask GPT"... "I asked chatGPT".
my answer is "dude, GPT just copypasted from the fucking manual so you don't have to read. congrats, you didn't learn a fucking thing."
it's depressing
RTFDS is the equivalent for electric engineering enthusiasts. It’s supposed to be tedious af, but I honestly enjoy reading data sheets for some god forsaken reason.
Started a new job as a tool tech in a rental center; maintaining, repairing, and simply showing people how to operate, a ton of different tools, some of which I've never even seen before.
First thing I did is setup a file share on my server that I've populated with 70+ manuals and growing by the day...
Read through them all myself to understand the nuances of each machine and be able to explain the details to customers; plus I can print them a fresh copy on demand just for good measure.
Honestly, who has the time? I could read the manual or I could enjoy my life instead.
That's your choice, but you don't get to then complain about the prices set by the people who read the manual for you so that you could enjoy your life instead. You either pay them or pay yourself.
Or, in case of Linux, you just suffer because the manpages are so god damn useless to average users.
Is it a reading comprehension thing? Man pages are so ridiculously useful. Do people just see a lot of text and refuse to even try?
It's hard to imagine them being more clear.
I mean, – in college – the running joke in my CS department was to try reading the man page even though it would likely be impenetrable.
I think the issue is that they're written from the perspective of someone in deep knowledge of the entire system already rather than someone who might be using it for the first time and trying to figure out their was around.
Let's take the first fragment of the first sentence of ls's page: "For each operand that names a file of a type other than directory[…]."
Well, what's a directory? Most people use the term folder; that could arguably not be fair as the term directory came first so let's ignore that criticism.
What's an operand in this scenario? While an accurate term, not exactly the most familiar (and certainly not helpful to, say, my partner who, due to dyscalculia, is almost certainly not to be familiar as it's most often used in math). But we crack open a dictionary and find it's the bit manipulated by an operator.
So…the text we give ls? Does that include values we give to the flags (not that I'd know what those are, yet, or what they do). And, of course, the SYNOPSIS describes that text we give as "file" while the very next sentence lets us know that operands can also be directories (mostly, most people think of files and directories as different things) so there's already an overt disconnect between the verbage, description, and examples, disallowing any pattern matching of my brain to quickly piece concepts together.
All of which will probably be hard for me to quickly comprehend as I'm expecting a description of a thing to start with what the thing is rather than immediately describing a small facet of the thing.
Like…I'd argue it's poorly written, on it's own face, but it's utterly bewildering for someone who isn't even entirely certain what all the pieces of the new world they're exploring are, yet, and is trying to piece things together via concept clues.
This. Terminology, unknown concepts (some simply expected to be known, such as standard parameter syntax) and a lack of simple examples to understand all the abstract explanations with (like the way 'tealdeer' presents it) make manpages utterly useless to anyone but powerusers with lots of time and an interest in the topic.
Someone saying "RTFM" unironically in regards to Linux is basically a red flag for new users at this point. Not because reading manuals was bad, but because the manuals provided are simply awful. They're developer- and expert-friendly, not user-friendly.
Or you just use Google
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.
👀
Hoping someone wants to correct me because I want an alias that prints all pages as one. Would also be nice if it did it for built-ins.
A skill that will be out sourced to AI.
This could be me, I started on unix before Linux existed. I was on HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, Solaris1/2, and I did the same thing, went in /usr/bin, did a ls, man all the commands, this is how I learnt unix command, shell, awk, grep, sed, etc.
It's very strange that somebody down voted you. Like, why?
I think we can see who downvoted on lemmy, but I don't care why he did it, really...
:)
i could be reading some fucking manuals right now instead of lemmy...
Imagine reading manuals lmao
I once wrote documentation for a fairly complicated bit of control and analysis software for use with test equipment I built for PhD students to use in my department. Towards the end of the docs I added a message that basically said "if you read this, come and see me and I'll buy you some nice food". Needless to say I never had to buy anyone anything.
Its the damn truth. Either rtfm which is the easy way since your predecesors made it for you or tinker with shit by trial and error untill you figure it out all on your own. Otherwise you are just lazy.
I got downvoted into oblivion a few weeks ago for suggesting something similar about car manuals. I’m glad to see that the sentiment isn’t totally lost. I honestly don’t get why people don’t read the fucking manual.
I could jump in any car my family has owned, starting with great-grandad's push-button transmission up to 2005 and instantly intuit the controls and go. You'd need the manual later for maintenance, but you could drive just fine. Now, you gotta read the manual.
I read every manual, but I'm skimming and skipping, looking for what I don't know. Maybe people have opened enough manuals that spent the first 4 pages, "Don't do stupid shit." and gave up.
Cause it takes time and effort. Most people just pay someone else to read the manual.
How is paying somebody else to read the manual going to help you operate the cruise control while going down the interstate at 85MPH?
My entire job is basically reading manuals 🙃
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.
Can't find the manual for my girlfriend or her kids.
mankier saved my ass more times than i'm willing to admit on Barebones distros that came with no man. Especially with the command examples
Reading the Gentoo Handbook in 2005 taught me more about GNU/Linux than all the tutorials about it I've ever seen
Part of it is cultural and habit and that is something you can just decide to change. It helps if someone brings it up, like this post, or you might not even think of it.
I bought a $10 power strip / surge protector last week. It was the first time this occurred to me. I pulled out the manual to throw it away, and it was only my experience in writing technical documentation that made me stop and consider actually reading/skimming it.
Maybe I'll change this habit. Maybe I'll start reading these things.
Of course some of them aren't meant to be read. But you can usually tell pretty quickly,
I need them to actually print the FM in order to R it.
From the man manual page: man -t name-of-command | lpr -Pps
This dumps the manual page, along with relevant formatting, to the default Postscript-capable printer attached to the system.
There are ways to print all manual pages this way, but you're gonna need a lot of paper. Bash's manual page is getting towards 100 pages* and ffmpeg's runs to nearly 700.
By comparing compressed sizes in /usr/share/man/man1 and the equivalent page count of those two commands, I reckon my system's full complement of manuals would be on the order of 35- to 40,000 pages.
* Figures obtained by using man -t name-of-command | ps2pdf - outputname.pdf to create PDFs instead, then scrolling to the end. I neither have a printer nor want to actually print anything.
I read the manual before i buy a product, I watch the product reviews, and if I can I watch the repair videos as well.
Big part of my enjoyment from buying things is the work I do upfront. I tend to do the same with any tech project.
I've acquired a reputation as the go-to frontend wizard by reading the MaterialUI documentation. Now half my job is randomly getting called on Teams, listening to someone ramble about what crazy ideas they have for their frontend, and pointing them to the MUI implementation that already exists (because there are no new ideas). It's stupid, those docs are modern and well-structured, people just refuse to read them.
Not everyone learns the same way. I've mostly found man pages to be pretty opaque. Finding examples online that are relevant to my specific use case have been much more useful to me.
This is too much to read, what is RTFM?
Read the fucking manual!
I don't want to read this manual of a post, it's too long! What's RTFM?
Rage against The Fucking Machine
I still have manuals for appliances I no longer have.
I know about man and man man, but why is there no man man man?
Yeah sure, unless the manual reads like a white paper from the 80s... Ya know like every man page ever
Learn fucking attention span?
cries in ADHD
The issues come up when I read the manuals and they do not explain anything to a person who doesn't already know most things.
Linux fails in too many places at having instructions written by people who care even slightly whether humans will ever be able to comprehend them.
When my friends talk about what books they're reading and it comes back to me I just joke and say "oh I largely read non-fiction".
I read every manual, decision tree, process document, whatever lands in front of me.
RTFM is life
Username checks out, RTFM makes most people psychotic. Not me though I love the funny words and the voices they speak to me with.
WTFM is job one. Honestly WTFMs and RTFMs should just be a requirement to any computer science degree.
CS101: RTFM - Someone has already helped you.
CS102: WTFM - You also need to help others.
CS103: FTFM - What to do when help isn't provided.
CS104: GDFL - What to do when there is no more help.
Edit: Other courses I teach include
CS201: WTFPM - Code Quality
CS202: UTC - The only time that makes sense
CS203: 1 - Counting for machines
Technical writing was a required class in my CS program. Is that not the norm?
I... Took a class on it but honestly I have no recollection of what we did in it.
Blew the technicians mind away because I read the bad manual
Blew the technician
I did not expect genuinely invaluable advice – not just for Linux – but for life in general on here LOL
Man if you are over 30
tldr if you are under 30
I even read the manual online before I decide to buy something.
I agree 100% with the sentiment, but it 100% does not apply to Linux. The (when it actually exists which too often it doesn't) 'manual' 90% of the time is written out of order by an expert presuming that 98% of what is being stated isn't greek to the newb and consequently ends up being completely useless if not downright harmful for them.
My favourite so far is: App has feature that can be installed but requires several dependencies before it will install it. The feature has it's own 'handy' cli command to point to an AppImage for a dependency which is useless because THE APP WON"T INSTALL THE FEATURE IN THE FIRST PLACE WITHOUT THE DEPENDENCY.
I don't want to spend all my spare time for a week learning about commands and syntax for 5 other distros trying to figure out why this fucking [insert device that supposedly nobody else ever has a problem with] isn't working. I'm not looking for a job in IT. I don't want to burn my eyeballs out translating nerdspeak. This isn't fun. I just want to click it and it works, which is apparently still too much to ask for after 20 years and 600 stupid distros later.
RTFM. GFY Linux. Learn how to write manuals first. Far as I can see, it's a bunch of BS instructions that error out halfway through for some reason or another.
/rant off
Pretty sure the joke here is that this is the only person that understood whatever the fuck was written in the man pages
Reading the manual and understanding the manual are two very different things.
Lol, like stuff actually still comes with a manual (beyond "unpack, don't drool, plug it in, wipe it if you drooled, done!" ).
But apart from that, that's also how I learned Unix.
"Take a look, it's in a book!" -what I would tell nubs coming to me for a checkout when I was in the Navy.
I think I'll try that.
ls /usr/bin
Hmm.... I think I'll try something else.
Oh, so you're þe guy I need to ask when I have any small problem and I'm too lazy to... RTFM.
RÞFM
ftfy
Oh, snap
This reminds me of the advice given to people learning Emacs, which is something quite possibly even more daunting than learning *nix - try going through the tutorial.
Which often seems to be ignored, apparently.
The only manual I need is the one that tells me how to shut his pompous ass up.
You drive a vehicle with a manual transmission.
You steer a vehicle with an automatic.