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I take RTFM more broadly to mean that I at least put in some effort to solve the problem myself. I googled, checked forum posts, read the man page, opened a config file or two and read some comments, etc. So I get offended when I get RTFM’d.
If you can’t reply without being a dick, then keep scrolling! Why participate in a forum where people with less experiece ask questions in the first place? That time could be better spent reading your shop vac manual or figuring out who you need to blow to save $700 on a dishwasher repair.
A manual killed my parents.
Batman-ual?
Spoon!
One of my pet peeves is how many new things do not come with a manual and I have to go and find one. I am one of the fortunate ones who can learn by reading and then trying. It seems that many cannot.
The idea that manuals in linux are a good way to learn and understand new software is peak linux neckbeard bs, and I will die on this hill. I congratulate OP on the exact type of autism that lets them feel this is an effective and useful method for learning new software, but if there is desire to have a greater adoption of linux maybe its bad to be snarky at folks for not instantly understand the terminal based documentation conventions of some dudes in the 70s. Maybe an alphabetical* list of all possible options is okay for referencing or searching, but is objectively insane way to learn or understand a problem.
It’s a good thing there are other resources, then. You can read tldr-pages. You can look at various official and unofficial wikis. You can look at Stackoverflow. You can look at Youtube tutorials. You can ask other people. Hell, you can ask a chatbot.
If the average user is unwilling to do that, maybe it’s better that Linux does not see a wider adoption.
They’re searchable and there are examples at the bottom of almost every one of them.
You might be thinking of
infopages. Themanpages are just the instructions, feature flags, etc. generally, whileinfo(when available) usually has a more general / layman description of the command with examples.Hrm, I checked the manpage for grep on my Mac an there are a number of examples. I checked it on Linux and there’s one example. I must be spoiled by the BSD’s.
I hardly think memorizing every useless fact in a manual and blowing the technician is the best way to learn. In Linux I encounter problems and seek the answers then I know how to apply this knowledge in the future. This isn’t dynastic China where we must memorize the five great books (/usr/bin, fridge, stove, furnace, and the analects) in order to progress in life.
OP may be a master of RTFM, but they clearly didn’t read through that passage before posting. Blowing the technician is a good way to save money, but maybe not the best way to learn.
“I don’t have the money to pay for this
pizzaappliance repair…”Is that you step brother?
You drive a vehicle with a manual transmission.
You steer a vehicle with an automatic.
My entire job is basically reading manuals 🙃
For appliances at least, 95% of “the manual” today is useless CYA safety disclosures in 17 different languages. Manuals today rarely contain useful information.
The actual manual is usually hidden somewhere on it for repair techs to find. For my oven it was taped on the back.
Yep. I needed the circuit diagram for my microwave to fix an issue with the light (kept blowing out bulbs rapidly). Turned out you have to pull it out of the top inner frame, after unscrewing the button board and top panel. Thankfully, was an easy soldering fix, thyristor blew.
Until you do like step one of taking an appliance apart, and realize that the real manual is marked “for technician use only”, and it’s hidden inside of the appliance.
My washer and dryer both have good manuals complete with circuit diagrams under the top once i take a few screws out. My chest freezer has one taped up under the hatch where the compresser sits. My refrigerator has one hidden in the door hinge.
That or Google “<model> service manual”
Yeah, my parents were about to throw out an oven that would keep shutting off. I pull it away from the wall and boom, wiring diagram. Take out the ohm meter, figure out that the resistance across the temperature probe went to near zero when steam intruded through a gap in the crimp. 5 dollar part and it was good to go for years to come (the new part was crimped in a simpler, more robust way).
Dishwasher had the service manual taped to the kick plate. It gave me codes to troubleshoot, finding the heating element died.
Yup, just got done wiring up an old washer to turn it into a feather plucker using the technician only manual!
Appliance repair in the 20’s? WTFY (Watch the fucking Youtube)
query:samsung Ice maker stoped working
Hi, I’m jimmy from shadyApplianceParts.com Did your samsung ice box stop making ice? That’s a common problem. What you need to…
Honestly I have to disagree. All my recently purchased appliances: microwave, washing machine, dishwasher and induction cooktop, had detailed instruction manuals that were genuinely useful, especially where the finer details aren’t obvious from the device itself.
Heck, even my wireless earbuds had a little bit of useful info, like how to force them into pairing mode.
Of course, all those manuals contained those nonsense safety warnings too (and I read every word of course! :P) but that’s neither here nor there.
And software doesn’t even come with those kinds of manuals anymore.
The troubleshooting section of the manual is almost always useless because it only ever covers user error.
My washer threw a drainage error and the manual suggested I blocked the outlet or had done something daft. I looked up the error code online and 90% of the time it was a failed water pump.
I had to replace the water pump. It was an easy job that required less documentation than a lego set for a 5 year old. You just had to know which screws to loosen to get to the pump. Was it documented? Of course not.
Not everyone learns the same way. I’ve mostly found man pages to be pretty opaque. Finding examples online that are relevant to my specific use case have been much more useful to me.
Meanwhile I’m sitting here with my ADHD brain that is unable to read the first two sentences of a manual without losing focus and thinking about 15 other things and marveling at those can actually get through something like that and have it stick in their brain longer than 5 minutes.
The trick with my ADHD brain is to refer to documentation when I’m hyperfocused on how the thing works for some reason. It doesn’t have to be because it’s broken, but it could be, lol.
RTFDS is the equivalent for electric engineering enthusiasts. It’s supposed to be tedious af, but I honestly enjoy reading data sheets for some god forsaken reason.
Hey someone that reads the manual. As someone who makes manuals that makes me happy.
I’ll read the manual after it stops working. There are 10 pages of “warning: don’t microwave your cat” and 10 pages of what obvious buttons do and if I’m lucky 3 pages of fault codes that in the worst case scenario I’ll see one of them the next 10 years.
Sometimes customers pay me to troubleshoot what other vendors sold them, I find the manual for their model number and basically flick through it until I find something.
RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community. I don’t mind reading the manual, but perhaps you can point me to where in the manual I could get further insight.
Reading a manual is also a skill. Being able to compartmentalize manual info into buckets of “obvious and I don’t need to read on”, “could be helpful”, “interesting, but it gets there I ain’t touching it” takes either training or just getting lucky after a certain number of reps.
Your second point is pretty much the most important skill learned in a humanities PhD, how to make your own learning path and learn what you need to know and what you should avoid.
This is the only comment I’ve seen in here that I’ve seen address this. The whole concept of RTFM is reactionary and ridiculous. That kind of thinking and behavior kept me at arm’s length from the Linux/tech community for many years. Still kinda does.
Fortunately this kind of thinking slowly but surely gets defeated, although we still have to fight for every inch of user-friendliness (and even modern security concepts) against elitists.
Unfortunately right now most documentation is still crap for average users, and people who keep repeating bullshit like “it’s better to provide CLI commands because they’re universal” (actual nonsense people keep saying) don’t make it better. The situation is so phenomenally bad that I’d outright assume Mistral AI with “Reflection” on to be more useful to newcomers when looking for solutions (on case a friendly professional or enthusiast isn’t available), because that thing is less likely to provide an outdated command for the wrong distro than a google search. Which is an absolutely abysmal place to be in for Linux as a whole if we want to keep the rising adoption train going.
Writing a manual is also a skill so starting with good ones help a lot.
RTFM is an obnoxious retort for people, arguably in community, not to engage with a member of the community.
I think there’s a low level of “How do I figure this out?” [generic] in which its good advice to ask “Does it say anything about this in the manual?” before you try and tear into a system as a third party giving advice.
I also think “I read the manual on my refrigerator” is some “I dare you to prove me wrong” horseshit. On the one hand, people don’t do this for a reason. Refrigerators simply aren’t that complicated to use. And the manual is rarely a smooth read, even for professionals. So its good advice, but not practical advice, better than half the time.
Reading a manual is also a skill. Being able to compartmentalize manual info into buckets of “obvious and I don’t need to read on”, “could be helpful”, “interesting, but it gets there I ain’t touching it” takes either training or just getting lucky after a certain number of reps.
Also, just a matter of free time and mental calories to burn. And hey, maybe if you’re a hobbyist who is hip deep in your Linux kernel because you eat this shit up, its the place you should have started. But also, Jesus Christ, maybe I just want a Mint instance to run a Jellyfin server. I’m not trying to get my master’s degree in this shit.
- It’s not impossible to learn if you read the manual. That’s how I learned.
- If you need my help cos you can’t figure it out, pay me. I don’t work for free.
- If you’re not paying me, I don’t owe you anything.
If you need my help cos you can’t figure it out, pay me
It’s so funny to see this on a sub dedicated to FOSS. Trying to imagine how many Pull Requests come with a bill attached.
There’s a difference between helping out people who are interested in, and capable of learning, improving, contributing to something…
… and people who just want thing work, and are also almost always unwilling to put literally any thought into this process.
‘User Support’ and ‘Collaborative Development’ are not the same thing.
There’s also ‘the computer guy’ syndrome, where a group of people just expect a seemingly infinite amount of uncomoensated time and mental effort from ‘the computer guy’ to solve all their problems, who then take this for granted, and become hostile and offended when you tell them ‘sorry, don’t have the time’, when ‘the computer guy’ has the audacity to… want to do something else at that moment.
Part of the fun of buying a game was getting to RTFM on the way home.
public transit, ftw… unless “I wish I died pecefully like my grandfather… the driver who was RTFMing, instead of his screaming passengers”
Last time I could buy a game with an instruction manual I was lucky that I could ride in a car without a car seat.
