this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
227 points (96.0% liked)

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Oh Man !!

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Manpages that include a section full of the most common usage examples are the true MVP.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really think tldr-esque snippets should be mandatory in manpages. Manpages are important documentation for when you already know how to use a program, but sometimes (always) I don't have 30 minutes to read the entire manual to figure out how to start using a program. The ffmpeg man is practically a book! Meanwhile tldr can give me exactly what I need to get started. If there's no tldr and I can't grep something out of the man, then I'm using a search engine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not all programs have a --help, and --help doesn't always give you clear examples of how to use something. For example, ffmpeg's help gives a dump of all the options, and no examples of how you probably want to put them together.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Gotcha I’m still learning Linux, thanks for the clarification.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

man -k Keyword search. For when you can't remember the name of the thing you forgot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

apropos is also helpful in that situation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

you can always learn from history...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Or tldr for those of us that are afraid of man

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago