It would appear that on Nov 19, Anton Aylward did say:
JtWdyP said the following on 11/19/2012 05:26 AM:
I note that some of the other posters seem to think you are not actually reading the {expletive deleted} manuals. But what I think I'm seeing is somebody having a hard time understanding the {many expletives deleted} manuals.
Many do when the come to Linux. See below.
I know that I almost always have a hard time understanding what they mean myself. I mean I can usually use them to remind me of something I used to know. But if they wanted me to actually learn something new from them, they would do better to include many more actual usage examples, instead of just describing the usage in such highly technical terms that it often merely confuse me.
Many man pages do give examples, but that is not their purpose. If they were how-to manuals they would be endless, and some of the 'technical dry' pages are long enough as it is!
I did say these man and info docs were the "best source"...
Please don't confuse purpose.
Yes. 'how-to' publications are valuable; but references are important to and those should be short and to the point.
And yes, how-to docs are a valuable resource when I can find them. My google skills often fail to find one that makes half as much sense tome as even the "over my head" tech manual... Which I can usually find with only knowing the command name. I have some issue with retaining stuff I don't do every day, unless I did do it the exact same way on a regular basis for an extended time. And even then... I still need to check "man ln" every time to remember that it's: ln -s target linkname and not: ln -s linkname target... And I use symlinks a LOT... So to do one of those things I don't do very often, I usually wind up trying {in order} man command info command then keeping that ref open I add {in another terminal window} command --help|less Then I open a browser and search for: command +(howto OR wiki) Opening each promising result in a new tab... But, as like as not I will still be lacking the one syntax example I needed to get the job done. So since my PC is really only has one user, I usually wind up guessing, and only occasionally wind up borking my system so bad as to need reinstallation.
If I'm right all I can say is keep plugging, eventually you'll at least learn some of it. But they are right too. The "man pages" and "info documents" are usually your best source of information on a command. Unfortunately they seem to be written like college text books, with the expectation that the student will be guided by some professor or some such thing.
What you are saying, and what I can empathise with, is that Linux is a different culture. I have a similar problem with Windows or VM/CMS or the times I have to deal with other IBM systems :-( The underlying assumptions about what Is and Is Not and How Things Are Done is just to different. I once nearly came to blows with a Tandem Non-Stop admin until someone told me that on the Tandem all network serves are carried out by a single non-forking process. The model behind many other OSs is that processes don't fork because forking is too 'expensive'.
I've dealt with *NIX documentation for so long that documentation for other systems, even Windows, seems difficult to understand.
As much as I have trouble with *nix documentation, I also usually find windows docs even harder. I don't want, can NOT even understand, most descriptions of how to point n click my way through a task. Most *nix how-to and wiki are somewhat better, But if I could find a version of the man document where each described function had at least one cli example of actual use. I'd be in Nirvāṇa...
But please, please, please, don't complain about the lack of 'how-to' guides when there are plenty included in the system documentation and there are more just a google away.
Yeah, If I was better at finding good how-to docs via google... But sometimes I can find something useful. The "included in the system" guides are another matter. I can't seem to find them. How does one do that anyway?? -- JtWdyP