There is also that obscure forum post from 2012 that refers to a post from 2004, from someone who gives some cryptic advise with commands not even in the manual that are outdated from 5 major releases ago but somehow still work. Except for one command tgat you then google and find a forum post from 2016 that it has been renamed, but the functionality stayed the same.
Anyways you put it all together and your problem somehow got solved, but you seemed to have created a black magic incantation because now a three headed demon has appeared and eaten your neighbour alive.
I have no problems with small man pages. My problems with manpages arise when a command has hundreds of arguments and I need to find a very specific combination.
If there is a well written manual or a wiki im fine with using terminal programs.
But ofc, there’s always no documentation available other than a man page.
There is also that obscure forum post from 2012 that refers to a post from 2004, from someone who gives some cryptic advise with commands not even in the manual that are outdated from 5 major releases ago but somehow still work. Except for one command tgat you then google and find a forum post from 2016 that it has been renamed, but the functionality stayed the same.
Anyways you put it all together and your problem somehow got solved, but you seemed to have created a black magic incantation because now a three headed demon has appeared and eaten your neighbour alive.
Reminds me of … (a bit on the long side, but i’d say worth the read, if you have some time)
… I’d still watch it.
I rarely watch TV and I’d definitely watch that.
If you have a problem with man pages, you have a bigger problem.
I have no problems with small man pages. My problems with manpages arise when a command has hundreds of arguments and I need to find a very specific combination.
Searching helps. Open a man page, press forward slash, type your arg, press Enter. Press “n” to get to the next hit or Shift+n to go to the previous.
This https://github.com/dbrgn/tealdeer is handy to have and can condense the info down quite a bit in a lot of cases.
(Tealdeer is a play on the original utility’s name
tldr
)A manpage is usually perfectly good with how descriptive they are. Not a problem unless you’re really short on time