Hello Linux community.
I’d like to take a moment to explain what I hope will be a simple concept (so really it’s more of a reminder) that everyone should say least know and understand.
Not everyone (myself included) learns best by RTFM. Some of us need a guiding hand or to watch a video instead. It’s not that we’re lazy or don’t like reading, it’s just that it doesn’t work efficiently enough.
I started my development career working on a VAX-VMS system. We had a large cupboard full of documentation for the OS, and it contained every answer I needed. Multiple volumes of documentation!
It was so much better reading official the docs to understand how a particular system call worked. And very gratifying being able to internally say “I worked it out for myself!”. I miss those days.
What manual? What part of the manual? What if something happens that the manual didn’t cover? What if the manual is out of date or wrong? What if the maintainer of the manual made a mistake?
RTFM works for uncomplicated things and/or is a good starting place but is largely an unproductive thing to say these days in my opinion
Absolutely wrong. Only the manual (I mean official documentation, not a “howto” in someone’s blog) can provide you a complete and up-to date information.
The most wishful thing anyone has ever said in the history of ever
RTFMP - I’d read the man pages if I could decipher them. 😁
Mostly /s
I can relate : I’m a noob. I often don’t understand the manual, so I look for forum posts that are clearer/ easier to follow/more directly related to my problem and most of the time I find some.
I can’t count the number of times I swear I read every man page and I can’t figure out how to structure my arguments–especially when they are nested or conditional.
I especially wish more man pages had common examples. Sometimes an example can say more than a paragraph of explanation.
Caddy when I was trying to learn setting up encrypted hello.
I especially wish more man pages had common examples.
A thousand times this. It’s all well and good telling us what each option does, but if we don’t know how to form the command around the various arguments and paths, then it’s all fairly useless.
I feel like you’d love
tldr.
No, fuck you.
If you want to use the community computer you have to actually put forth the effort to learn how to do it. There is no excuse in 2026, vast mountains of educational material in every format written for every combination of medium and cognition are available at an instant.
From your perspective it would be easier and more efficient if people made videos, or talked you through it. From everyone else’s perspective it’s a big waste of time when they could be doing literally anything else and you will end up with a stronger understanding when you do it yourself.
That’s not to say people won’t help you, just that you should put forth the effort to learn so you don’t burden the community, such as it is, with your simple requests.
Alternately, you don’t have to use linux. Windows is a perfectly good operating system, macos is a perfectly good operating system.
this is an absolutely toxic take of the issue. I took OP’s statement as less of a “I won’t read the manual” and more of a “I struggle to be able to read manuals”
Which is fully fair , there are many times I had read the manual, and then had to look up the issue further anyway because I either missed the poorly written section, or misunderstood what it was saying.
If you want a prime example of that, go look at ffmpeg and try to figure out how to select a specific language for subtitles on a video without looking it up online. its via -map as an advanced option, which is described as a parameter to extract specific streams (which also means they would need to map the video and the audio streams since including a -map removes every auto stream). but map doesn’t tell you subtitle tracks are index:s. it does tell you that you can look at stream specifiers for valid search options, which does include s as a type, and lets you know that you can use m for metadata tagging, but you would need to make the connection that the type is s, and the meta data search flag would be m:language:langcode, and you need to make the connection the entire string has to be concated so its index:s:m:language:langcode For someone who is learning ffmpeg and video transcoding, that is not a very good setup. The stream specifiers give a few examples of what the potentials are but, the location where it specifies the types are in a different area than the one where it specifies the metadata keys. At that point just asking online or searching is way easier.
Note: this is just an issue I have see people come across because ffmpeg is one of the more complicated programs (the man page is over 2300 lines)
is it in the manual? yes. is someone who doesn’t know how to use ffmpeg and is trying to learn it going to find it? that’s debatable.
If I was in that situation, my next step would be googling it, and if I couldn’t find it via searching, I would be reaching out to communities. At that point “RTFM” is useless to me.
No, you’re wrong.
People who still feel like they aren’t being coddled enough when it comes to linux help in the year of our lord 2026 are the toxic ones. Assistance with every possible problem exists in every imaginable format and with focus on a dazzling array of backgrounds and levels of comprehension.
At some point when you’re set loose in the library and can’t find out about locomotive axle layouts it’s your own fault.
I dunno man, I want my friends and family using Linux. I don’t think this is the right mentality.
People still converse over simple facts. What does the plant that grows cinnamon look like? Who won the Super Bowl in x year? Simple facts that could easily just be looked up, but people like talking to each other.
Even reading off a Wikipedia page to someone else, you get an opportunity to cater the tone, pace, and omissions / additional clarity to whomever you’re talking to.
The drop in Stack Overflow questions shows that if people can’t get helpful answers from other humans, they will get them from AI.
Ι must say that Arch Linux’s wiki pages are easily understood. But man pages are not. I can’t follow the standard manual format. Just like with IKEA instructions, they just don’t make sense to me. My brain is like that. But Arch Linux pages are good.
there’s a standardized man format? News to me. I thought developers just threw everything in at random order.
Long time linux user: The worse problem is they don’t even tell WHICH manual is relevant to the issue.
“How do I make my secondary drive auto-decrypt?” “RTFM”
Could have at least said “man crypttab 5” so that I don’t have to waste 3 hours just trying to find the starting point.
“They”. That’s one sort of people who does RTFM the wrong way in my opinion. If I do RTFM, even for obvious simple ones, I most likely point to where to look at, ideally with a link. I do not RTFM literally, but saying there is some documentation and pointing to it usually. To me just saying RTFM (literally with this acronym) is rude, especially if someone already struggles and asks basic questions. Not everyone is “they”.
RTFM long predates videos in the internet; at this point I’d actually call it inclusive of videos and guides.
I actually get pretty pissed off when the only guide for a feature beyond a couple lines of “here’s what this can do” with no elaboration is just a video. I don’t want a video. I want a damn manual with working examples.
But if its all there is, I’ll watch it before asking questions. The same should go for people who prefer videos, they should at least try the manual first, or looking at some guides or videos.
What’s frustrating for people (generically speaking) is when zero attempt is made in advance of posting questions, and from what I see, is the majority of “RTFM” responses.
Oh I hate how everything is a video. Sometimes I just want text so I can ship to relevant section.
It drives me nuts.
At least provide a transcript somewhere. Thats all I ask.
RTFM was the old way and no one should be doing it anymore; who has been doing it to you?
If it’s a more complex subject matter i can understand people asking questions, because in those cases the documentation can also be more difficult to understand. I’ve asked questions in those situations myself as well, and a video of someone walking you through it can be very helpful. When someone asks the most basic questions ever i tend to be more on the RTFM side of things though. If you ask a question that literally has like a oneliner answer in the manual it seems to me like you didn’t put in that much effort before posting. I never actually RTFM’d someone though. I either answer anyway if i feel generous, or i just ignore it lol.
do you mean man pages? man pages are awesome. man is like the biggest deal command in unix.
I am not an expert but I will help you where I can!
“RTFM” (or similar comments like “it’s in the docs”) are just mean and useless without a reference.
Like, okay, superior user in the internet: If it’s in the manual/docs, what page? Do you have a link? Could you quote the relevant section?
Often people ask because they couldn’t find the answer in the docs. Simply pointing them at the answer is infinitely better than “lol the answer is in there somewhere”
See also: “Let me Google that for you…” Like mf Google brought me to this thread!
I agree that “RTFM” can be insensitive, and even mean. However, the place it comes from is genuine. It’s nobodies job to tell you exactly what page to look at. If you’ve dug through the docs and still can’t find your answer, make it explicit that you’ve searched the manual, and perhaps be explicit about parts you don’t quite understand.
The whole “RTFM” thing was born from people asking for help when they obviously hadn’t made a proper try themselves first.
What’s worse, is if this is GNU-ware, there is a good chance the answer IS NOT IN THE MAN PAGE. I think it was bash or maybe gawk. I don’t remember exactly, but I had a question that simply wasn’t answered in each man page. GNU docs are absolute trash, written without any consideration for the audience.
I think GNU favors the info tool, try that if the man page is lacking.
I feel like every time I’ve gone looking for an info page, it was just the man page content, but now I’ve got some useless shit I installed.
I mean, maybe this is a debian thing.
often on linux, you can simply type
man <command>and get TFMi would agree with you on GUI apps, where it can be confusing.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “the manual”. Though I suppose the Linux community is the most likely to be flipping through a physical book to figure out their bash script.
NOBODY LEARNS BEST BY RTFM BUT WE DO IT ANYWAY SUCK IT UP
I know It’ll be a controversial take on here; but while I don’t like the use of AI for most things, I’ve found LLMs to be immensely valuable when it comes to learning how to Linux, and as an extension, how to self host.
I understand the limitations, but it’s so much more straightforward to tell an LLM what I’m trying to achieve then follow those instructions, than it is to try and poke about from site to site trying to piece together the information. Particularly if you don’t know what it is you need to search for in the first place.
Obviously you have to exercise some caution, but it makes so much more sense to me to confirm instructions provided by an LLM than it is to try and figure out where to even start. And let’s be honest, not all forum users are as forgiving to complete noobs.
The problem with using an LLM for information is that you can ask chatgpt:
“please provide me with 3 different interpretations of the main function of the Linux command ‘ls’”
and you’ll get what you ask for. An llm is an inappropriate tool to lookup accurate information.
I’ve found LLM’s to be useful as well. I wouldn’t have Jellyfin running on my home server now if it wasn’t for an LLM, and it was the first service I learned how to run. But an LLM has also sent me into a loop of testing out the same few prompts over and over again and expecting different results.
As a rule I don’t tell people to RTFM, because it has some rude dismissive connotations, although I will share when it helps me solve a problem I’ve been butting up against that would’ve been solved if I had just read the docs.
That being said, I do encourage people to read the docs, as others’ walkthroughs can be misinformational, and are usually tied to specific setups or software and hardware versions. It requires learning how to wade through a lot of information to find the info you need, but the info is usually guaranteed to be the most current and reliable.
That all being said, I’m more than happy to help when people want it.
