4mo ago

RTFM is Sage

322 comments

Most people don’t even read the error messages. They’re never gonna read a whole manual.
- Most people were conditioned by more "user-friendly" systems to ignore the content of error messages because only an expert can make sense of "Error: 0x8000000F Unknown Error". So they don't even try, and that's how they put themselves in a Yes, do as I say! situation.
  
  It’s not even obscure, context dependent errors. I’ve had many professional system administrators not understand what “connection was closed by peer” meant.
  
  But most error messages are in plain English first (plus some numbers and codes).
  No, they see white (gray actually) blocky text on a black background, they think the machine is broken and go into panic mode. Instead of reading.
  Which is kinda what you said.
  
  I don't need to make sense of error messages. Which is good because I usually can't.
  I just need them copy/pasteable cuz that shit is going in Google and I'd rather not manually type it.
- People who don't read error messages or do not take the time to see what is going on and just come to the technician/mechanic/doctor saying "it doesn't work" or some half-assed hypothesis piss me off so bad.
  I know that at some point we all do a little of this in our lifes, but some people don't seem to be able to read one goddamn paragraph ever.
  
  To be fair, techs don't usually talk to the people who can read, so they're only ever going to see idiots. There are competent people in the world, they'll just never need your help, so you don't see them.
  Last time I called tech support, it was for a Dell, and I interrupted their speech to tell them I already looked up the diagnostic. They asked which numbers were lit on the error panel to confirm I had the right diagnostic, and passed me directly to who I needed to talk to. I only called tech support because the cpu socket died and I was putting in a warranty claim, otherwise they would have never even heard from me because I could just install a new motherboard myself.
  edit: speeling
  
  but some people don't seem to be able to read one goddamn paragraph ever.
  I had a problem with my car. It felt strange while driving. Made some unusual noise. Then a bit later the motor warning light came on.
  I went to the garage, told them about the warning light and what I noticed the time before, what I suspected and such. A short while after the mechanic came to me and asked for a few details, as my description "wasn't helpful" and the repair would be much faster with more details that told them where to look etc. Turns out the guy who checked in my car only noted "a warning light is on" and nothing else of my ramblings.
  So sometimes it's also paying attention to what might be important and relaying information.
  
  At this point, if a student brings in a laptop, explains what doesn't work, and leaves me to diagnose and fix it, I consider it a good report because it means that the student didn't get any overconfident ideas. If a student also explains what they were doing when a thing failed, I'm giving them preferential treatment.
  Then there are comp-sci students who attempted something. I had one who disassembled their laptop and tore a ribbon cable. I had one who plugged in a random mis-matched RAM stick that turned out to be busted and wondered why Windows kept crashing. I had one who completely fucked up the registry. I had one who wanted to install Ubuntu for dual booting and accidentally wiped the entire SSD.
  I would rather spend an hour babysitting their computers than an entire afternoon un-fucking something they thought they could handle. If it were up to me, I would restrict the crap out of their user accounts, but the faculty leaders insist, against empirical evidence, that they're smart enough.
  
  They’ll refuse to attempt to understand the problem then get mad when they get ripped off.
- What about the fucking manual?
  
  Kama Sutra?
  
  Don't fuck the manual!
- They don't.
  Undoing self-owns like ignoring available information is the basis for 40% of the economy.
- And because people don't read error messages, many applications/sites/etc don't even put them, or if they do they either don't have any public facing documentation to actually figure out what that code means, or they do and it might as well be nothing
- I recently had a coworker who would frequently get an error message while completing their time card. The message was slightly cryptic, something like "invalid cost center", but no indication (in the message) of which line(s). This happened so often, that when they would call me to complain that they were getting an error, I usually already knew what error they were getting, but for some reason, they could never remember the steps to find & correct it and had to call me every time.

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
- 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.
  
  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 fstat does, it's much easier to guess that GetFileTime would be the right function to get a file's last modification time than fstat, for example.
  
  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 reread 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.
- 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.
- Microsoft documentation actually sucks information out of your brain and leaves you knowing less than before you read it.
- 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.
- 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.)

For appliances at least, 95% of "the manual" today is useless CYA safety disclosures in 17 different languages. Manuals today rarely contain useful information.
- Until you do like step one of taking an appliance apart, and realize that the real manual is marked "for technician use only", and it's hidden inside of the appliance.
  My washer and dryer both have good manuals complete with circuit diagrams under the top once i take a few screws out. My chest freezer has one taped up under the hatch where the compresser sits. My refrigerator has one hidden in the door hinge.
  
  Yeah, my parents were about to throw out an oven that would keep shutting off. I pull it away from the wall and boom, wiring diagram. Take out the ohm meter, figure out that the resistance across the temperature probe went to near zero when steam intruded through a gap in the crimp. 5 dollar part and it was good to go for years to come (the new part was crimped in a simpler, more robust way).
  
  Dishwasher had the service manual taped to the kick plate. It gave me codes to troubleshoot, finding the heating element died.
  
  Yup, just got done wiring up an old washer to turn it into a feather plucker using the technician only manual!
  
  You mean actual paper manuals ester-egged inside the appliances themselves? In 2025?
- The actual manual is usually hidden somewhere on it for repair techs to find. For my oven it was taped on the back.
  
  Yep. I needed the circuit diagram for my microwave to fix an issue with the light (kept blowing out bulbs rapidly). Turned out you have to pull it out of the top inner frame, after unscrewing the button board and top panel. Thankfully, was an easy soldering fix, thyristor blew.
- Appliance repair in the 20's? WTFY (Watch the fucking Youtube)
  query:samsung Ice maker stoped working
  Hi, I'm jimmy from shadyApplianceParts.com Did your samsung ice box stop making ice? That's a common problem. What you need to......
- Honestly I have to disagree. All my recently purchased appliances: microwave, washing machine, dishwasher and induction cooktop, had detailed instruction manuals that were genuinely useful, especially where the finer details aren't obvious from the device itself.
  Heck, even my wireless earbuds had a little bit of useful info, like how to force them into pairing mode.
  Of course, all those manuals contained those nonsense safety warnings too (and I read every word of course! :P) but that's neither here nor there.
  
  All those safety warnings are useless nonsense, until:
  This vacuum is not water resistant and no part of it shall come into contact with water. Do not operate this vacuum on wet floors.
  Wash the infuser with water or coffee machine cleaning powder only. Do not wash with soap. Every 6 months, relubricate the seals with food and water safe silicone grease certified with NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 and NSF/ANSI 51.
  Well, good to know.
- The troubleshooting section of the manual is almost always useless because it only ever covers user error.
  My washer threw a drainage error and the manual suggested I blocked the outlet or had done something daft. I looked up the error code online and 90% of the time it was a failed water pump.
  I had to replace the water pump. It was an easy job that required less documentation than a lego set for a 5 year old. You just had to know which screws to loosen to get to the pump. Was it documented? Of course not.
- And software doesn't even come with those kinds of manuals anymore.
  
  Some does if you're lucky.
- There's sometimes a few Ikea style pictures showing how to put it on a table and plug it in. Which is possibly useful to some.
- Leno on the lost are of Owner's Manuals.

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
  
  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.
  
  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

RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community. I don't mind reading the manual, but perhaps you can point me to where in the manual I could get further insight.
Reading a manual is also a skill. Being able to compartmentalize manual info into buckets of "obvious and I don't need to read on", "could be helpful", "interesting, but it gets there I ain't touching it" takes either training or just getting lucky after a certain number of reps.
- Writing a manual is also a skill so starting with good ones help a lot.
- Your second point is pretty much the most important skill learned in a humanities PhD, how to make your own learning path and learn what you need to know and what you should avoid.
- RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community.
  I think there's a low level of "How do I figure this out?" [generic] in which its good advice to ask "Does it say anything about this in the manual?" before you try and tear into a system as a third party giving advice.
  I also think "I read the manual on my refrigerator" is some "I dare you to prove me wrong" horseshit. On the one hand, people don't do this for a reason. Refrigerators simply aren't that complicated to use. And the manual is rarely a smooth read, even for professionals. So its good advice, but not practical advice, better than half the time.
  Reading a manual is also a skill. Being able to compartmentalize manual info into buckets of “obvious and I don’t need to read on”, “could be helpful”, “interesting, but it gets there I ain’t touching it” takes either training or just getting lucky after a certain number of reps.
  Also, just a matter of free time and mental calories to burn. And hey, maybe if you're a hobbyist who is hip deep in your Linux kernel because you eat this shit up, its the place you should have started. But also, Jesus Christ, maybe I just want a Mint instance to run a Jellyfin server. I'm not trying to get my master's degree in this shit.
  
  It's not impossible to learn if you read the manual. That's how I learned.
  If you need my help cos you can't figure it out, pay me. I don't work for free.
  If you're not paying me, I don't owe you anything.
- This is the only comment I’ve seen in here that I’ve seen address this. The whole concept of RTFM is reactionary and ridiculous. That kind of thinking and behavior kept me at arm’s length from the Linux/tech community for many years. Still kinda does.
  
  Fortunately this kind of thinking slowly but surely gets defeated, although we still have to fight for every inch of user-friendliness (and even modern security concepts) against elitists.
  Unfortunately right now most documentation is still crap for average users, and people who keep repeating bullshit like "it's better to provide CLI commands because they're universal" (actual nonsense people keep saying) don't make it better. The situation is so phenomenally bad that I'd outright assume Mistral AI with "Reflection" on to be more useful to newcomers when looking for solutions (on case a friendly professional or enthusiast isn't available), because that thing is less likely to provide an outdated command for the wrong distro than a google search. Which is an absolutely abysmal place to be in for Linux as a whole if we want to keep the rising adoption train going.

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 mean, how else were you ever going to figure that out?
  Really, the manuals where they made it fun are the best.
- 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
- 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
  
  You might look into some Zachtronics games. Both ExaPunks and Shenzhen I/O require their paper manual counterparts to be played.
  
  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.
  
  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!
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Which also proves the point that a manual isn't preventing anything.
- 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.

Part of the fun of buying a game was getting to RTFM on the way home.
- public transit, ftw... unless "I wish I died pecefully like my grandfather... the driver who was RTFMing, instead of his screaming passengers"
  
  Last time I could buy a game with an instruction manual I was lucky that I could ride in a car without a car seat.

I once read the first 3 chapters of the Git book and my coworkers think I'm some kind of Git wizard
- One of the first things I did at my first full time job (while my very under prepared boss was looking for "junior-dev-friendly" tasks for me to work) was go to git-scm.com and just read through all the man pages I could. I spent a few days doing that, then my boss asked me to create a PowerPoint and present what I learned to the team. It was instantly apparent that I was the only one who knew anything beyond git commit -a on the team at that point, and I was promptly appointed the "title" of "source control SME". I've been heading up version control best practices for every team I've been on since (which is scary because the git cli has changed quite a bit since I read all those man pages but I haven't had a chance to go back and refresh my knowledge).
  
  Do you have a blog or something? Do you write about your experiences regarding this?
  
  These days I just ask llm to fork me a branch and whatever else I need :p
- Literally same 💀

I mean in general, "read things -> learn" is a good approach to life imo.
- Too long and difficult. I'll let chat gpt tell me instead and read that between adverts on Love Island
  
  Grok, is this true?
  
  I'll be honest, I'm guilty of using Chat GPT at times for stuff I know barely anything about and know I probably won't be able to find through research as quickly as I'd like to. I always try the old-fashioned way of using a search engine first, go through reddit and forums and stuff, but sometimes I just need to use AI for a good first pointer
  
  we're cooked

The idea that manuals in linux are a good way to learn and understand new software is peak linux neckbeard bs, and I will die on this hill. I congratulate OP on the exact type of autism that lets them feel this is an effective and useful method for learning new software, but if there is desire to have a greater adoption of linux maybe its bad to be snarky at folks for not instantly understand the terminal based documentation conventions of some dudes in the 70s. Maybe an alphabetical* list of all possible options is okay for referencing or searching, but is objectively insane way to learn or understand a problem.
- There's other ways to get info. And man pages are a great way to learn how something is expected to work on your system. And it's offline, without ads, scams, ai generated false info.
- as a professional sociotechnical problem solver I will join you on this fatal hill
  like take the 4 types of documentation in diátaxis
  man pages usually fulfill the reference need, and sometimes kind of that of how-to guides if you're lucky and your local man has examples
  but that leaves more than 50% of documentation needs lacking
  and discoverability is atrocious -- you have to already know that the command (or commands) you need exists and what it's called
  one of the most useful things I learned in a linux sysadmin course was apropos / man -k, which lets you search installed man pages by keyword. but hardly anyone else seems to know about it -- I only learned of it because a teaching assistant mentioned it off hand! -- and even then it only helps if you guess the right keyword for your problem
  I am vexed by this situation
  
  People don't know about man -k because of all the man pages they should have read, they forgot the man one.
  
  I think it should be the default if you don't use parameters. A little usage help and the list of commands (with a "do you want to see the list of commands? (Y/n)" message)
- It's a good thing there are other resources, then. You can read tldr-pages. You can look at various official and unofficial wikis. You can look at Stackoverflow. You can look at Youtube tutorials. You can ask other people. Hell, you can ask a chatbot.
  If the average user is unwilling to do that, maybe it's better that Linux does not see a wider adoption.
  
  is the fact that people can with effort and error figure out how to do something a reason not to make it easier for them to do?
  I mean
  you can in theory write multi-threaded bug-free C code -- just read the docs and the specs and the source of your libs and never ever do something that seems to work but is subtly fatally incorrect
  and yet we still have golang and rust and many other options to do things more safely and easily
  if someone wants to use Linux but doesn't want to memorize the Hundred Mandatory Commands and Thousand Flags lest they accidentally cat > /dev/sda, why shouldn't there be a system for them?
  
  Agreed! You can look elsewhere, and that's how I, and I think many other folks, learned. The OP was talking about the manuals though, specifically mentioning /usr/bin. So to restate my point is not to say it's impossible to learn linux, but that man pages are weird and bad place to push folks looking to learn.
- Name calls people who read documentation.
  Does not offer any alternative.
  "No John, you are the neckbeards!"
  
  I use the neckbeard to destroy the neckbeard
- initially when I was learning linux. I had troubles finding the command I needed. I could have first gone and read everything and then come back to try, which I did. But sometimes the man pages, the ubuntu and arch forums weren't as great of a help as messing up myself.
  Could there be a better way to document with slightly more examples: yes. Would it help: tons
  But this is just my opinion, and I am just a noob
- THIS. I feel like linux man pages are as useful as an Analytical mechanics textbook for someone who just wants to drive. Like yes, sure, it's amazing we have such a detailed documentation but for God's sake just introduce basic usages first
- ssh connects and logs into the specified destination, which may be specified as either [user@]hostname or a URI of the form ssh://[user@]hostname[:port]
  undefined
  
  ssh [admin@]192.168.1.1 ssh: Could not resolve hostname ]192.168.1.1: No address associated with hostname
  That's how I would interpret that part of the man page had I no familiarity with ssh. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect the reader to know what those brackets mean.
  
  Agreed, and I think a larger part of it is that most folks pick it up based on context after long enough, so it's rarely explained. The square brackets are optional arguments. So I could use ssh 192.168.1.1 or ssh postimo@192.168.1.1 with the first asking for the account after I connect, and the second just asking for the password. You can see how the computer took it in the response you got. hostname ]192.168.1.1 being it saw the @ and assumed everything after was the hostname and included the ]
  It's worth noting that you can't just connect to a random machine like this, they need to also be running an ssh server. But I wouldn't expect you to know that without reading a great deal more of the documentation 🫠
  
  You get to learn the notation conventions with <> and [] fairly early on. Maybe a very new user would make that mistake. If he doesn't get it fairly quick, maybe computers aren't for him.

I work in maintenance, people act like I’m doing magic, but 90% of the time all I’ve done is read the fucking manual, the other 10% is just basic awareness.
- It's literally all this, all the way down until the turtles.
  
  Holds manual
  Squints
  Turtles
  
  Wasn't it just one turtle down there?
  
  Does reading medicine books count too? Since we're all driving human bodies 24/7? Or is it just turtles down to the bottom of the tech layer.
- Its fucking impossible to get new kids to read the manual. They just resort to asking others for stuff they could look up. When I was new I asked the old timers as a last resort. Not because they'd be mean about it, but because I know I wouldn't learn as well just being handed information.
  
  It’s not a generational thing, I’ve worked with folks from all age ranges, old timers are just as bad about it as younger people and those from my age range, you’ve either got it or you don’t. Stupidity and arrogance are human traits, not generational ones.

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.

One of my pet peeves is how many new things do not come with a manual and I have to go and find one. I am one of the fortunate ones who can learn by reading and then trying. It seems that many cannot.
- Yes in the 80s electronic equipment like TVs even came with electrical schematics in the box. Not really intended for most end users (repairing a CRT is quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing) but to help the repair guy. No extended warranty scams, no approved dealers get parts only. Just all the help they could offer.
  Now there's a one page leaflet in the box showing where the on button is and for the rest you'll have to find the pdf.
  Software came with thick ring binders describing every feature and updates came with inserts to put at the right places in the binders. Manuals actually were useful.
  
  Yup, good luck trying to find user's manual for Android for example
  
  Then came built-in obsolescence...
- or the manuals now are complete shit.
  
  When the company doesn't want you repairing the stuff you paid them for, they don't make good manuals.

I work in IT. I've read so many manuals that I don't need to read manuals almost ever.
As soon as you learn the design language for stuff, it usually just makes sense where to find stuff and how to fix it. It's rare that I have a problem that I can't solve just by looking at it.
If I ever get stuck, guess what? I RTFM. That's basically my job. I RTFM because end users can't be arsed to do it themselves. If everyone read the manual, I'd be out of a job.
- I dread the day the users read the manual
  
  I doubt that day will ever come
- In many cases you get hired for having the knowledge and experience instead of just having skills.
  
  Maybe. But in my experience, the most valuable team members are not the ones with the experience, but the ones that are curious and resourceful.
- quick everyone, stop RTFM ! save this man's job !
  
  Lol. I think it's more likely that I'll win the lottery than users RTFM enough for me to worry about my job.
  It's just a funny thought that any of them would try.
- Many linux CLI tools also tend to have similar names for arguments with similar effects.
  That also reduces the re-reading.

I take RTFM more broadly to mean that I at least put in some effort to solve the problem myself. I googled, checked forum posts, read the man page, opened a config file or two and read some comments, etc. So I get offended when I get RTFM'd.
If you can't reply without being a dick, then keep scrolling! Why participate in a forum where people with less experiece ask questions in the first place? That time could be better spent reading your shop vac manual or figuring out who you need to blow to save $700 on a dishwasher repair.
- Yup.
  What even is your problem that you'll get worked up enough to spend energy spreading misery over some tiny annoyance from some internet stranger? Do you get pleasure out of that? If so, for shame.
  When I get annoyed by some internet stranger's conduct online, I don't engage. I disengage. Life's too short to get worked up over the little things I find, and we'll all feel better when we don't engage in that negativity.
  Yes, I've blocked people without ever saying a single word. Sometimes while lurking, I'll find some conduct (not beliefs, conduct) that I disagree with. I don't then go on and admonish them, I make them "disappear" from my life, then go on thinking about what I should eat for dinner.
  
  I don't understand why some internet users are like this. Like it costs literally nothing to be nice. The only people who spread hate and insults online are those who have a miserable real life, so not worth engaging with.

My folks bought a new EV recently and my dad was unable to figure anything out for days. I hopped in and was doing everything he wanted in minutes.
"How the hell did you do all that‽"
"I RTFM Dad"
- "Reading! Kids, nowadays (sigh)."
- Wow, didn't think I'd see an interrobang in the wild!

I hardly think memorizing every useless fact in a manual and blowing the technician is the best way to learn. In Linux I encounter problems and seek the answers then I know how to apply this knowledge in the future. This isn’t dynastic China where we must memorize the five great books (/usr/bin, fridge, stove, furnace, and the analects) in order to progress in life.
- OP may be a master of RTFM, but they clearly didn't read through that passage before posting. Blowing the technician is a good way to save money, but maybe not the best way to learn.
  
  Jeez, maybe the technican deserves a nice blowie, field work isn't easy y'know.
  
  "I don't have the money to pay for this ~~pizza~~ appliance repair..."

When you were partying
I read the fucking manual.
When you were having premarital sex
I mastered reading the fucking manual.
While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity
I cultivated READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.
And now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help?
- You RTFM to have a sense of superiority over those that don’t
  I RTFM to avoid having to talk to another person
  We are not the same
- Does your manual contain a chapter about barbarian invasions?
  
  Whose doesn't?
- My internet is broken. Can you have a look?
- Can't have friends asking you for help if you don't have friends.

devdocs.io is beloved.

I don't bother with manuals any more. I never manage to retain much information unless I need it right now. Way easier to just fumble along and find what I need when I need it and cobble together a half-baked "understanding".
Should go get some ADHD meds one day.

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:
  https://github.com/tealdeer-rs/tealdeer

Here
undefined

for application in /usr/bin/*; do man $application; done
get going

RTFM

this joke is way older than HTML

Hey someone that reads the manual. As someone who makes manuals that makes me happy.

Meanwhile I'm sitting here with my ADHD brain that is unable to read the first two sentences of a manual without losing focus and thinking about 15 other things and marveling at those can actually get through something like that and have it stick in their brain longer than 5 minutes.
- The trick with my ADHD brain is to refer to documentation when I'm hyperfocused on how the thing works for some reason. It doesn't have to be because it's broken, but it could be, lol.
  
  For me, it's only when it's broken.
- Oh, reading a manual is a very involved process for me. First, I'll put the task in my bullet journal, then I'll postpone it to the next week, then to the month, then to the next month. And then, if I feel lucky, I'll bring it back into my daily log, and postpone it a few more days before getting annoyed with writing it down so many times that it could fill a full page, and finally reading it.

After a while it's basically muscle memory so you don't have to go digging as much. OpenBSD's are my favorite. So well-written.
- Yea I run OpenBsd on my VPS. So much nicer than having to wonder where this particular Linux distro decided to keep this particular config file.

Y'all not just out there vibe OSing?

A manual killed my parents.
- Batman-ual?
  
  Batmanuel?

I'll read the manual after it stops working. There are 10 pages of "warning: don't microwave your cat" and 10 pages of what obvious buttons do and if I'm lucky 3 pages of fault codes that in the worst case scenario I'll see one of them the next 10 years.
Sometimes customers pay me to troubleshoot what other vendors sold them, I find the manual for their model number and basically flick through it until I find something.

Lol. That's exactly what I did in the early 90s. ls /usr/bin, then man at, or whatever it was that came first, and work onwards from there.
Moreso when I installed my own Unix machine (briefly Minix, quickly replaced by Linux) and had to actually learn how to manage it.
But then I came from a mix of 8 bit, PC and semi big iron (Tandem) culture where any machine you used would matter of factly come with a litteral wall of binders containing documentation for pretty much anything (which led to the fun regular "documentation day" where you had to manually "patch" the documentation by replacing pages in all the binders with updated ones).
Anyway knowing what the fuck you were doing was pretty much expected. So everyone spent a lot of time perusing documentation.
Of course nowadays, to read documentation, you first have to find it, which can be quite a challenge in itself. But at least the manpages are still there.
- It's interesting. There's a lot of talk about how chatgpt makes people lazy, but honestly I think Google killed the "read the manual" ethos.
  Back in the day when you couldn't just search for everything, you needed enough understanding of the manual to find anything in the index.
  So a key part of figuring anything out was reading at least the start of the manual.
  Now, fuck it, you just type into Google and try to guess enough context to understand what's going on.
  
  Agreed, finding a manual should always be the first step to solving a problem imo. Even when searching online, I prefer if I can find the official docs/wiki for a piece of software, then search within that.
- I used to be a Crew Chief of F-15's in the U.S. AirForce. We had manual patches too. Luckily, that was Supports job duty.

I think LBD is the other half of it. If you have the confidence to try and fix or build something you Learn By Doing it. That eventually compounds and you could pretty much do anything. Maybe takes a bit longer than a professional would do it. A great shortcut would be to RTFM

Yeah, this sure resonates with me. When I started with Linux to set up anything you had to RTFM. I remember constantly reading some "Linux printing How-To" or "Linux Wi-Fi How-To". It definitely stayed with me. If I buy something and it has a manual I'm reading it. Just in case.

I think a lot of documentation just fly over my head. I have a masters degree in mathematics, but so many manuals have such deeply ingrained "tribal" language that everyone takes for granted that you know.
If you have a good starting point for a poor linux noob to read manuals, hit me up.
(That being said, I DO read the manuals for appliances and all that. THAT stuff is luckily easy)
- This is an actual problem and causes headaches for a lot of beginner programmers. The only solution aside from finding well written guides, is to just look everything up as you go like you are reading a legal text or something. Eventually it gets better, but also doesn't because programmers are terrible at naming things and making assumptions.
  
  Thank you. I appreciate the vote of confidence :)

I just learned about "man thing" in terminal a couple days ago. I had no idea they're kept in that folder.
- what folder ? please tell me I'm just starting out. So far I've tried "man libwacom" (because I'm having trouble with my tablet) but it says there's no entry for the package. Do most packages usually have a manual entry ?
  
  I found them under /usr/share/man/, then "man1", "man2", "man3" etc. based on the category system (which I think is like, libraries, syscalls, exes, something like that)
  I intuited /usr/share because almost everything the package manager installs will be under /usr somewhere, and man pages aren't binaries or libraries, they're architecture-independent, so they can't be /usr/bin/ or /usr/lib, they'll probably be in /usr/share and luckily I saw "man" under there.
  Hope that helps! Reading the FHS guide is a good learning experience but nobody should have to do it.
  
  Do most packages usually have a manual entry ?
  Usually there are manual pages for commands, for libraries and drivers like libwacom it is less common, and they are not necessarily the same as the package name. Some packages also just have a Readme file or an HTML manual installed under /usr/share/doc or similar.
  When unsure, I often just check the list of files that belong to a package, most package managers can do it. E.g. on Debian-based (i.e. apt using) distros, dpkg -L $packagename will list it, in arch based distros it is pacman -Ql $packagename.
  
  Do most packages usually have a manual entry ?
  Yes.
  Try man man ;)

I read the manuals for everything now. I think it's because when I was a kid videogames used to come with great manuals and half the fun was just reading through those. One of my favourites was for the original Heavy Gear on PC. that thing was like a hybrid manual and lore bible. Or old Flight Sim games with manuals that were as thick as text books.
Now you don't get shit.
- Arcanum manual, my beloved https://archive.org/details/Arcanum_-_Manual
  
  I had the same experience. It could even be a long time before you were allowed to play, so reading the manual just increased the anticipation and made your mind wander wildly with all the possibilities.
- Yep, I remember fondly the booklets in the disc cases. Some were light, some were thorough. It's a lost art

I've been using Linux for about a year now, I have no clue what is even in /usr/bin ....you people have manuals?! I needed a manual to find the thing.
- it is where all the binaries (programs) live (that are not system critical, those would be in sbin). so whenever you execute ls? it is actually /usr/bin/ls and so on and so forth.
  then there is the "man" command. basically a manual. you can use it to find out stuff about other commands and such by just typing "man [command]" for example "man ls"
  edit: this knowledge has NOT been acquired by RTFM but rather by watching YouTube
  
  Thanks that's a massive help, I'm usually just searching around GitHub, forums and YouTube for info, literally never used the man command.
  
  I really appreciate you explaining
  All this talk in the thread of "rtfm" and you're the first one to actually explain how to get to the manual for commands
- Keep in mind this is FreeBSD, but this is the perfect structure that FreeBSD obeys.
  Linux distros fuck it up on a daily basis. App devs interpret it themselves and fuck it up even further.
  But if you dont know what etc, usr or bin or local means, it should give you a better understanding. Navigating docs, manuals and commands should be easier.
  
  Most app devs fuck it up (especially the lazy bastards that just throw everything in /opt and call it a day). I like being the dev who won't let my code ship until everything fits nicely into FHS 3.0.
  There's dozens of us.
- Just type in man
  <your binary>
  to go through the binary manual, also called man page :)
- You can look at the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard for starters.
  About manuals, try man man in the command line, then something like man ls.

linuxlunatics is almost a genre of its own

God yes. I absolutely LOVE a well written manual.
Even if you THINK you know how a thing works, it’s always good to find out the quirks and gotchas, not to mention functionality that might not be obvious at first glance.
In fact, I read the manuals before buying an item or piece of software. They tend to be much more enlightening about a product’s limitations than the marketing material is.
Conversely, it really annoys the fuck out of me when people come on forums and ask a really basic question that’s answered on page 2 of the manual. It shows that someone is incredibly lazy and incapable of basic problem solving. And they have the audacity to get offended when you tell them it’s covered in the manual.

I read the manual for every appliance I have. I do man and help even before using the command. I look for multiple articlse explaining the how and why before doing something new with my computer and yet when I look for help many tech people are condescendingly telling me to read the doc. Well, I did. But I don't understand, because I coudn't grasp the concept, because english isn't my mother tongue, because many doc are written by great technician with poor writing skills that are bad pedagogues, and I would like someone to answer my question.
- English is my mother tongue and I still have issues with reading some manuals because they're written by bad pedagogues using jargon phrases that mean nothing, or worse, mean something completely different from a basic English reading of those words in that order.
  
  Let's not forget there is a lot of documentation written english by people who are not as fluent as they wish they be.

Half of US adults can't read at a 6th grade level. This is haunting.
Some strikingly high percentage can't complete complicated tasks on a computer (eg: find 3 user email addresses and add them to a spreadsheet).
Reading the manual is good advice but I think some people are just left behind
- I feel like a big problem is that a lot of people never learned how to learn.
  Adding onto your examples, I've also heard about a study once where they were given similar basic Excel tasks. However, you didn't even have to solve the tasks. Instead, just trying to get help from the help function or searching online got you into the highest skill bracket. That bracket ended up being the smallest group.

Never forget what they took from us.

It must be nice to be able to read and recall.

Sorry, I have a chronic medical condition that makes reading manuals physically painful, which 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.

copypasta levels

Started a new job as a tool tech in a rental center; maintaining, repairing, and simply showing people how to operate, a ton of different tools, some of which I've never even seen before.
First thing I did is setup a file share on my server that I've populated with 70+ manuals and growing by the day...
Read through them all myself to understand the nuances of each machine and be able to explain the details to customers; plus I can print them a fresh copy on demand just for good measure.

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.
  
  Or you just use Google

A skill that will be out sourced to AI.
- And so now we will have even dumber humans. I dont think I can stand more dumb people.

My biggest annoyance with man pages are that built-ins are a separate command and that there is no way to print all man pages but the first with the man command. That's right. There's no way to print every page for a command, 1 through 7 or whatever, with a flag. I am confidently saying there's no way to do it.

RTFDS is the equivalent for electric engineering enthusiasts. It’s supposed to be tedious af, but I honestly enjoy reading data sheets for some god forsaken reason.

now people just "ask GPT"... "I asked chatGPT".
my answer is "dude, GPT just copypasted from the fucking manual so you don't have to read. congrats, you didn't learn a fucking thing."
it's depressing

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.

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