Can't find the manual for my girlfriend or her kids.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
1747 points (98.4% liked)
linuxmemes
26894 readers
50 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. π¬π§ Language/ΡΠ·ΡΠΊ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. π¬π§π¦πΊπΊπΈ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed. Β
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I got downvoted into oblivion a few weeks ago for suggesting something similar about car manuals. Iβm glad to see that the sentiment isnβt totally lost. I honestly donβt get why people donβt read the fucking manual.
load more comments
(3 replies)
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.
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
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'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.
Reading the Gentoo Handbook in 2005 taught me more about GNU/Linux than all the tutorials about it I've ever seen
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.
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 for printing and... I'm so sorry.
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