copypasta levels

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)

Here

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

get going

Y’all not just out there vibe OSing?

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.

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

Imagine reading manuals lmao

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

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.

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

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 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