[mdlug-newbie] Hello LUGgers!

[Aaron Kulkis]

Garry Stahl wrote:
> Robert Meier wrote:
>> Read man pages. 
> 
> Man pages are of limited use.  Some are genuinely helpful, others 
> require a degree in computer engineering to understand.  The rest are 
> worse than useless.  In general a real mixed bag.  For the most part I 
> have found the advice "read the man page" to be unhelpful for the 
> beginner.  Why?  Most man pages are not written with the beginner in 
> mind, but the *nix expert.

Reading manual pages does two things:

1 -- even if you don't understand it, you start to learn the
terminology of the *nix world.

2 -- it develops an awareness of capabilities, even if you don't
have an immediate need to use those capabilities.

MOST commands can be experimented with (playing with different
command line flags, etc) without causing any damage to the
system (i.e. those which present different forms of information,
or present it in different ways).

> 
> Relative "read the man page" newbie reporting.
>