[GTALUG] Suggestions: A Book for a Beginner, new to the Linux Shell

[o1bigtenor]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Kevin Cozens via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> On 16-07-17 11:59 PM, ac via talk wrote:
>>
>> I guess most of us have not used man pages for so many years,
>
>
> hm... that could be an interesting little survey to put up on a website. The
> question could be "How do you get information about a new program?". The
> options could be: built-in help, man, info, all of the above, man and info,
> or other (ie. internet search).
>
> I use man pages all the time. I don't remember the last time I used info.

I find that man pages are most often terse with nary an example of either
positive or negative outcomes. Therefore when I am trying to understand
what the whatever is going wrong with something that isn't working man
pages are rarely useful. Now to those that know what they are doing
they seem to have just enough information so that one can then find which
knob to turn or button to push so that the software does what its supposed
to. For those of us who aren't computer science majors - - - well man pages
are rather less than useful.

I find its far more helpful to find someone's tale of how they got xyz working
far more useful as then there are some examples of what to do and what to
do when things go screwy (which happens all too often).

Regards

Dee