Newbies: Did you know we carry a real good `man`ual around—all the time?

General system Newbie
1

Just today I was looking for some information about the log levels, and again I was astonished how good the Linux manuals are.

Did you know we carry around complete manuals for almost anything in Linux? The command is called man and even works offline. Many—if not all—manual pages have even been translated into local languages, if you set your system language to anything other than English.

Most commands in Linux show an ominous “section number” referring to the manual, like syslog(2). Ever wondered? You can call that up using man 2 syslog. Section 2 of the manual is about system calls (functions provided by the kernel). [If the number has a p appended, it is a POSIX Programmer’s Manual page.]

man pages are usually much more detailed than what you get by using a program’s --help function.

So for a quick check, use something like

$ man --help

but if you want a more detailed description, try

$ man man

Yes, even man has its own manual page—try it out!

On an English system (showing only the beginning):

$ man man

MAN(1)                         Manual pager utils                        MAN(1)

NAME
       man - an interface to the system reference manuals

SYNOPSIS
       man [man options] [[section] page ...] ...
       man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
       man -K [man options] [section] term ...
       man -f [whatis options] page ...
       man -l [man options] file ...
       man -w|-W [man options] page ...

DESCRIPTION
       man  is  the  system's manual pager.  Each page argument given to man is
       normally the name of a program, utility or function.   The  manual  page
       associated  with each of these arguments is then found and displayed.  A
       section, if provided, will direct man to look only in  that  section  of
       the  manual.   The  default  action is to search in all of the available
       sections following a pre-defined order (see DEFAULTS), and to show  only
       the first page found, even if page exists in several sections.

On a German system (showing only the beginning):

$ man man

MAN(1)                 Dienstprogramme für Handbuchseiten                MAN(1)

BEZEICHNUNG
       man - eine Oberfläche für die System-Referenzhandbücher

ÜBERSICHT
       man [man Optionen] [[Abschnitt] Seite ...] ...
       man -k [apropos Optionen] Regulärer_Ausdruck ...
       man -K [man Optionen] [Abschnitt] Begriff ...
       man -f [whatis Optionen] Seite ...
       man -l [man Optionen] Datei ...
       man -w|-W [man Optionen] Seite ...

BESCHREIBUNG
       man  ist das System-Anzeigeprogramm für die Handbuchseiten. Jedes an man
       übergebene Argument Seite ist normalerweise  der  Name  eines  Programms
       oder  einer Funktion. Gefunden und angezeigt wird die Handbuchseite, die
       auf jedes der Argumente passt. Wenn ein Abschnitt angegeben wird,  sucht
       man  nur in diesem Abschnitt der Handbuchseiten. Ohne eine explizite An‐
       gabe werden alle verfügbaren Abschnitte in einer festgelegten Reihenfol‐
       ge durchsucht (siehe VOREINSTELLUNGEN) und nur die jeweils zuerst gefun‐
       dene Seite angezeigt, wenn die Seite in mehreren Abschnitten vorkommt.

Man pages go back to Bell Labs, back to Jerry Saltzer’s doctoral thesis proposal in 1964, and are still unknown by many users, the man command being grossly underrated!

Oh, and did you know what whatis is?

Try the “standard sequence to learn more”:

$ whatis whatis

$ whatis --help

$ man whatis

:wink:

2

Un Joke;

$ whatis 'on your mind'
3

Sounds best in English, so you might want to

$ LANG=C whatis 'on your mind'

:wink:

4

And for newbies, use https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page that is best linux wiki for “system administration / information”.

5

hehe

6

Linux always had good manuals and good wikis to learn details about the commands and systems. But these days there is a new source for information: AI in form of https://perplexity.ai

I started my career in IT with reading manuals many, many years ago. Then wikis emerged and I learned to use wikis. Now I have learned the value of AI. I recently had to setup a docker server on debian bookworm. With no clue about docker I was hesitant to read all the manuals, wikis, tutorials and such. It is too much information.

That was my “aha moment” with perplexity. I was just asking questions how to do this and that and perplexity gave me answers which were of a quality I honestly never had expected.

I can only encourage everybody to use it. It is for free. You can copy&paste the questions you are asking here in the forum to perplexity and you will be surprised about the quality of the answers. And it is not only the answers itself, but perplexity also gives you the links to the sources it was using to create the answer for you.

Give it a try. It is worth it.

7

There are also multiple good TLDR providers out there. I use teal deer for it. You can find instructions here https://tealdeer-rs.github.io/tealdeer/

As you get better with Linux, you might switch from man to –help, then if you just need a quick and dirty reminder, tldr is there for you.

8

Indeed a good supplement. I also use tealdeer to provide tldr. It’s in the official extra Arch repo, install like so:

$ sudo pacman -Syu tealdeer

Use like so:

$ tldr tldr
9

man man

You dangled the hook and I bit it. Why the heck would man need a manual I thought?

man
man1005×686 79.4 KB

I’m still reading…

10

I must admit I didn’t even know man -a intro. Now let me read about that stuff I’ve been using for decades… :wink:

Learning something new every day. That’s real fun.

Bildschirmfoto vom 2025-08-24 19-13-40
Bildschirmfoto vom 2025-08-24 19-13-401920×1080 189 KB

11

Don’t forget to tldr -u every once in a while

12

that wallpaper is awesome. who is that and what’s going on there?

13

Thanks. I somehow landed in a Klaus Schulze remembrance weekend, because I met him personally the first time around 1976 or 1977. Inspiration came from my other post. So I listened to some of his music of that time, and set up a wallpaper rotation with some of the rare pictures we have.

This is him doing some patching (or maybe just changing a VCO) on his then “Big Wall” with modular synth components, during the 1977 (I believe) Europe Tour. Upscaled and slightly corrected from a very small (400x267 px) image to 1920x1080. Of course we all smoked everywhere at that time.

His electronic music has accompanied me from the mid-1970s until now. RIP, Klaus, we miss you.

14

my God he was prolific…over 60 albums in 60 years…the more I read the more I am peeling an onion. Without having heard him, and responding cursory, he sounds the German equivalent of Brian Eno but maybe a whole different cat. What a resume.

When it’s beer time (in 1.5 hours tick tick tick) I will make time to hear his music. Thanks for indulging me.

I do remember as I was an 80’s kid. Grocery stores, restaurants, malls. When they finally banned smoking in U.S. bars (90s?) the writing was on the wall and I quit. Eventually ;).

15

I recommend starting with one of the older albums, like Timewind, Mirage, Moondawn, X or (especially) Body Love. Btw, the “Big Wall” travel case at the right has his portrait made for the Mirage album.

Newbies: See, we’re crazy! Not only Linux manuals, but also good music here! :wink:

16

Damn you inspired me to put on Timewind again. I was supposed to be sleeping!

17

Irrlicht is also a great album! :heart:

18

I should also be sleeping (12:15 am here), but what the heck… Timewind it’ll be!

19

edit: This was meant to be a reply to the posts above about whatis

I am quite disappointed that they made

$ whatis love

merely output

love: nothing appropriate.

what a lost opportunity.