linux Any tips on reading Man pages effectively in Linux?

[ZachTheDoggo]

Hello, 

I am having trouble reading man pages for certain commands, it seems intimidating for newer users. I was wondering if you have any tips or tricks on how to read man pages effectively. I'm a new user on Arch Linux. I already know how to search man pages using (man -k), but I was wondering how do you read and understand the commands effectively. (ex: chmod or fdisk)

Thank you. 

[Sauron]

man pages will tell you what each option does but not why you might want to do those things or what you should be using in your situation. For more new user friendly instructions you want to be reading tutorials or wiki pages. For example here's the arch wiki page covering common uses of chmod https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_permissions_and_attributes#Changing_permissions

[deadlou666]

I recommend googling instead of reading man pages, it's alot more time effective and you'll most likely understand easier 

[ZachTheDoggo]

29 minutes ago, Sauron said:

man pages will tell you what each option does but not why you might want to do those things or what you should be using in your situation. For more new user friendly instructions you want to be reading tutorials or wiki pages. For example here's the arch wiki page covering common uses of chmod https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_permissions_and_attributes#Changing_permissions

Question.

Can you use man pages for etc files too?

[Ralphred]

2 hours ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

Can you use man pages for etc files too?

Sometimes, from the last few lines of "man xorg"

Quote

SEE ALSO
      X(7), Xserver(1), xdm(1), xinit(1), xorg.conf(5) ...snip
 

you can see there is a man page for xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf), which is one of the most complete man pages ever, when considering the possible complexity of xorg.conf.