Man pages are for people who already know a lot about Linux and understand all the nuances and understanding of Linux
Even after using Linux for many many years I still don’t understand wtf nearly all man pages mean. It’s like a fucking codex. It needs to be simplified but not to the extreme where it doesn’t give you information you need to understand it.
Tbh that’s most of Linux, not designed for average people, designed by Linux users who think that all others should know everything about Linux.
They also usually assume a lot about the users’ knowledge of the domain of the program itself.
In my experience, many programs’ man/help is very brief, often a sentence or less per command/flag, with 2 or more terms that don’t mean anything to the uninitiated. Also, even when I think I know all the words, the descriptions are not nearly precise enough to confidently infer what exactly the program is going to do.
Disclaimers for potentially dangerous/irreversible actions are also often lacking.
Which is why I almost always look for an article that explains a command using examples, instead of trying to divine what the manual authors had in mind.
It depends on who writes them, I guess. More “modern” software come with pretty good and concise manpages, meanwhile stuff like the coreutils still have manpages that feel like an incomprehensible mess.
Man pages are for people who already know a lot about Linux and understand all the nuances and understanding of Linux
Even after using Linux for many many years I still don’t understand wtf nearly all man pages mean. It’s like a fucking codex. It needs to be simplified but not to the extreme where it doesn’t give you information you need to understand it.
Tbh that’s most of Linux, not designed for average people, designed by Linux users who think that all others should know everything about Linux.
I find them very useful for programs that I already know what to use them for otherwise I usually consult the arch wiki.
They also usually assume a lot about the users’ knowledge of the domain of the program itself.
In my experience, many programs’ man/help is very brief, often a sentence or less per command/flag, with 2 or more terms that don’t mean anything to the uninitiated. Also, even when I think I know all the words, the descriptions are not nearly precise enough to confidently infer what exactly the program is going to do.
Disclaimers for potentially dangerous/irreversible actions are also often lacking.
Which is why I almost always look for an article that explains a command using examples, instead of trying to divine what the manual authors had in mind.
It depends on who writes them, I guess. More “modern” software come with pretty good and concise manpages, meanwhile stuff like the coreutils still have manpages that feel like an incomprehensible mess.