[ale] I am so tired of Linux Fanatics

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, 2010-07-07 at 22:36 -0400, Jim Philips wrote:
> The problem with RTFM is the assumption that the fine manual was well
> written in the first place. I have been using Linux since 1995 and I
> have  always felt that the man pages were written in exceptionally
> poor fashion. The immediate underlying assumption is that you need to
> know about *everything* and that most basic functions of a command are
> beside the point. The man page for grep is an excellent example. They
> never go straight to the point. The high use examples are always
> buried somewhere that you would least be likely to look for them. The
> "F" in RTFM is not at all deserved. How can I find a file containing
> "x" in my home directory? The question will only be answered in the
> most convoluted way.

Well, man pages are intended as quick reference, not really as tutorial
material.  Man pages often fit information very compactly (the GNU bash
page is one notable disexample of this, where it is itself a book) and
assume that you know what you are looking for when you call them up.

That's not to say that they can't be used for learning---when I was
handed a CD set with Linux distributions on it (for free!) in 1996, the
guy told me, "don't ask me questions until you have spent a week or two
with the system," and I (mostly) obliged: I spent two weeks running
Slackware '96.  I found it fortunate that "cd" and "dir" worked at the
command prompt on that system, as I was trying to find out how it could
be at all useful.  (At the time, I had Windows 3.1 on my system, and I
just figured that all software was that craptastic.  Obviously, I had no
real expectations of this whole "free software" thing.)

Anyway, the first thing I did was started to explore the filesystem.  I
remembered from reading the screens---and a printout---at install time
that "my" area of the filesystem was /home/mike or whatever username I
used then.  So since "cd .." worked, I thought I'd try "cd .." again,
and I wound up at /.  For being used to drive letters, that surprised
me.  The whole thing was a tree, and wait a minute, didn't the installer
say something about using another partition for /home?

So, I did a "dir" and saw the list of directories, and I used "cd" and
"dir" to poke around.  The next day I got the idea to print the dir
output to my dot matrix printer, but I couldn't figure out how.  So I
got a notebook and I write down the commands in /bin and went from
there.

I am pretty sure I went through the filesystem out-of-order, too,
because I remember finding /usr/bin relatively quickly after I installed
the system.  Maybe I read that somewhere in the install screen or the
DOS to Linux HOWTO that I printed before I nuked DOS.  I can't remember,
but I do remember going "how isn't this slow as hell" when I saw just
how much stuff was in /usr/bin.  I mean, my DOS system didn't like it
when there were more than a hundred or so files in any given directory!

I also remember that while I was writing down the list, I saw the "man"
command.  I could not imagine what the command did that it would be
named "man", so I typed "man" at the prompt and it asked me what manual
page I wanted.  Oh, well, I tried man: "man man" and that worked.  It
was confusing, though---I don't know if it is any less confusing today,
or if I am just so used to reading man pages that they all seem coherent
to me these days.  Anyway, once I realized what that was, I think I
started running "man" for all of the things I wrote down.  A week or so
into reading man pages, and I realized something:  This system, despite
its looks, was _*far*_ more powerful than DOS.  I mean, it did all
*sorts* of stuff, even before considering application software, that my
former operating system just couldn't imagine doing, or if you could do
them, you paid pretty dearly for the privilege.

I also remember reading about gcc, and going, "Wait, the compiler
actually comes with the system?"  I was pretty floored.  I mean, wow.
And the fact that you could---and commonly *did*---run software that was
intended to be run on the terminal (kinda hard to call them all DOS
prompts when they assuredly are not!).  I mean, you sometimes opened up
a DOS prompt on Windows 3.1, but most everything you did with it was
really some Windows 3.1 GUI application.  This was refreshing to me.
And today, I think that things have grown up very nicely---and every
time I sit at a system with one of Microsoft's operating systems on it,
I feel awfully restricted.  It's a little better if Cygwin and mintty
are installed... or at the *very* least, PuTTY...

Anyway, I've digressed quite a bit.  Point being, I think that there is
something else needed, more of a "intro to" that is handy on the system,
but man pages are incredibly useful for the niche that they are meant
for.  :-)

	--- Mike