tiny sidenote: just don’t get discouraged, you are probably starting a lifetime journey not a one afternoon hike
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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I like to read info files when there is one (there are only hundreds of info files vs. thousands of man pages). Many are on your computer already in /usr/share/info folder. To read them, either use M-x info inside emacs, or console app info which is part of the texinfo package, or tkinfo from the AUR. The console app will show you the man page if there is no info file.
Info files tend to be organized hierarchically and be more extensive and tutorial in nature than man pages.
man is your friend. It shows you the manual for a command. Like man pacman will show you the manual for pacman. You can exit it with q.
I think this simple tip is exactly what I wanted - straight in there! Thanks pal!
You can also use tldr for quick guide
You can also use tldr for quick guide
As a general refrence, there's also the tldr command line program/command which gives a simplified version of the man page entry for all sorts of common commands :)
Good luck in your Linux ventures! ❤️
Yes, was literally just recommended this and looks useful!
I’ve been someone people would consider a “Mac expert” for years…
But giving Linux a go I realised how little I actually knew and understood about the underpinnings of operating systems.
Definitely interesting learning all the things that macOS was just doing for me or even hiding from me.
There is a linked command apropos that searches the man page database for keywords. It can be very helpful if you forget the exact command you're looking for.
Oh nice, thank you!
You can push it even futher with wikiman, an offline interface to search and view manpages and the Arch wiki.
pacman and yay are basically the only "Arch terminal commands".
Everything else is just bash/Linux.
yay options are identical to pacman options, plus some extra.
If something you're used to from Debian doesn't work on Arch (like update-grub), just google the command plus Arch to find the non-specific Linux equivalent.
This is good to know, thanks.
So much of what you do early on is installing packages and updating. I guess it felt more different than it really is!
Install the tldr package. It's a help utility that briefly describes a command and lists several examples of common operations.
Interesting. I’ll check this out!
But the moment I don’t know what yay, -s etc actually mean haha…
$ man yayThey are just program names. Some of them make clear sense, some less so.
yay is Yet Another Yogurt. Which is a pun on yaourt, the program it was based on.
I should have guessed!
As obscure as stuff like that is, I do appreciate the quirky humour at the same time… once you know.
TLDP bash guide, or something like that.