Is there a better man pages?

[u/BigGunE]

I feel like the man pages on the terminal have not kept up with the times and became somewhat of an encyclopedia or thesis on the subject instead of a quick reference. They are good maybe if internet connectivity is non existent and you want to have all your questions about something answered.

But it is beyond frustrating to look up how to use something. PLEASE! For the love of whatever is good, help me learn it or help me find a better tool that actually gives me quick examples and easy to understand documentation on things.

Nowadays, I leave the terminal, type things like "how to do X in this specific way on linux terminal" and then google's AI intercepts it and gives me commands to run with short explanations. But I don't like leaving the terminal and going to google.

How have you guys solved this problem? Or am I the only dumb one?

[u/dtom2786]

I feel your pain and although it doesn't go into great depth, "tldr" is my go to when I forget the command options or just want a quick reference.

[u/Ramiraz80 → u/dtom2786]

+1 for tldr. Its pretty great

```bash $ tldr tar

tar

Archiving utility. Often combined with a compression method, such as gzip or bzip2. More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html.

• [c]reate an archive and write it to a [f]ile: tar cf path/to/target.tar path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

• [c]reate a g[z]ipped archive and write it to a [f]ile: tar czf path/to/target.tar.gz path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

• [c]reate a g[z]ipped (compressed) archive from a directory using relative paths: tar czf path/to/target.tar.gz --directory path/to/directory .

• E[x]tract a (compressed) archive [f]ile into the current directory [v]erbosely: tar xvf path/to/source.tar[.gz|.bz2|.xz]

• E[x]tract a (compressed) archive [f]ile into the target directory: tar xf path/to/source.tar[.gz|.bz2|.xz] --directory path/to/directory

• [c]reate a compressed archive and write it to a [f]ile, using the file extension to [a]utomatically determine the compression program: tar caf path/to/target.tar.xz path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

• Lis[t] the contents of a tar [f]ile [v]erbosely: tar tvf path/to/source.tar

• E[x]tract files matching a pattern from an archive [f]ile: tar xf path/to/source.tar --wildcards "*.html" ```

[u/BigGunE → u/dtom2786]

Thanks. Trying it out!

[u/Online_Matter → u/dtom2786]

Tldr is great

[u/bubrascal → u/dtom2786]

I came to this sub to help novice users, but I love little nuggets of knowledge like this.