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linuxlunatics is almost a genre of its own
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
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:
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
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.)
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.
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
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.
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 treat 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.
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
fstatdoes, it’s much easier to guess thatGetFileTimewould be the right function to get a file’s last modification time thanfstat, for example.
Microsoft documentation actually sucks information out of your brain and leaves you knowing less than before you read it.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 mean, how else were you ever going to foodie that out?
Really, the manuals where they made it fun at the best.
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
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!
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.
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.
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 to 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.
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.
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 know about man and man man, but why is there no man man man?
It must be nice to be able to read and recall.
Sorry, I have a chronic medical condition that 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.
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?
Username checks out, RTFM makes most people psychotic. Not me though I love the funny words and the voices they speak to me with.
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…
:)
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 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)
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
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
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.
