We’ll know what the right answer was after it passes.

My Muller hand mixer was designed to break.

Feit light bulbs aren’t worth it for any price less than free.

Yeah I’m okay with the basic navigation options. The primary point is that man pages do look like they had written by someone who does not do technical writing. Whether that’s someone coming from a law background, programming, or whatever.

It’s not written for an end user who wants to know how to use the tools they have available. It will tell you what a command “does”, sometimes, but it doesn’t explain itself. It presumes a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge, or familiarity with the syntax of man writers.

For another example, the man for ls repeatedly lists options referencing “implied” entries without ever explaining what “implied” means in this context. It presupposes that the reader knows what that term means. I know what an implication is in an English class, and the antonym for “implied” is “explicit”, but in a man page? No clue. Not like there’s reference to or examples of “explicit” entries to contrast with “implied” entries. You just have to know what it means in context, or figure it out some other way.

I don’t think you get what I mean.

I don’t mean that man itself isn’t functional, I mean the way most man pages are written isn’t clear enough to communicate how to use the programs they refer to.

I’d include the man page for man in that, and I’d encourage anyone else to look at it from the eyes of someone who can follow written instructions and ask “How does this manual/help file compare to others I have read?”.

So, for example, in the examples, it says:

man -a intro Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages contained within the manual. It is possible to quit between successive displays or skip any of them.

Those two lines are the only place within man’s man page (at least the one you get from man man) that use the string “intro”. What is an intro in this context? Guess you got to run it to find out.

What is -a for? About 200+ lines down there is a two sentence explanation.

The first sentence tells you how man normally behaves, saying: “By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it finds.” This sentence is unclear (“When does man exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it finds? When I run man ls I see the manual for ls on my screen until I press ‘q’ to ‘quit’ out of it.”) and not immediately connected to the purpose of the flag/option.

The second sentence says: “Using this option forces man to display all the manual pages with names that match the search criteria.” This is a lot clearer, and my only complaint about it can be that it’s not the first sentence in the explanation.

Tbf, most man files are not easy to understand. Between man, tldr, ArchWiki, and an occasional O’Reilly book I can usually get things done, but documentation on Linux still has a lot of room for improvement.

Why PPAs instead of repos? Why…

What general topic or category are you looking for? There’s a lot out there.

Sounds like interpersonal conflict. Always sucks to see a productive dev quit though.

What if was socialism, but for a nation? What could go wrong? /s

“All classes working together” as a counterpoint to socialism? Where have I heard of this before…?

How does one even get on a private server these days? (Feel free to DM)

Hypocrisy, politicization, hellfire, and lack of community I guess.

If religion is supposed to be the opium of the masses, it should at least leave me feeling better after church. The rising ideology was naive and attracted narcissists, and there was less and less space to hold on to the original beliefs. It started looking less like a refuge from the world and more of the world. It wasn’t perfect before but there was more flexibility and grace at least.

I’d also suggest authentication by key file.

I wouldn’t feel compelled to kill my clone, so I don’t think my clone would feel compelled to kill me either.

Esperanto ne estas perfekta, sed ĝi estas to plu populara planlingvo en tuta la mondo, kaj ĝi estas sufiĉe bona.

He can’t chudpost every time, but I’ve listened to him talk with an open mind before and in my opinion his occasional insights are overshadowed by his self-important whinging.

Work on building capacity in yourself to engage. You may be less naturally skillful at interacting, but everyone can improve. You’re not that much older than her either. Be kind, open, and honest with her. Ask open ended questions. Make time.

With rare exception (Israel) America can seem downright schizo from administration to administration.

Yeah, but how long do you have to dampen your crack in order to feel the equivalent clean of two dry wipes?

I get that’s the principle, but how long are you supposed to spray for? How much pressure? Is there a trick to it? In my own limited experience, it doesn’t actually do much more than dampen the poo.