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Cake day: January 9th, 2026

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  • thingsiplay@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlRTFM
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    2 days ago

    “They”. That’s one sort of people who does RTFM the wrong way in my opinion. If I do RTFM, even for obvious simple ones, I most likely point to where to look at, ideally with a link. I do not RTFM literally, but saying there is some documentation and pointing to it usually. To me just saying RTFM (literally with this acronym) is rude, especially if someone already struggles and asks basic questions. Not everyone is “they”.


  • thingsiplay@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlRTFM
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    2 days ago

    The idea of RTFM is that if you have questions, then we are all on same page with basic information found in the manual. I mean you expect others explain what is already said in the manual. Its like asking how to use your microwave oven, even if you have the manual right at your hand. Now, if the manual is unclear or difficult to understand, that is a different story. Then you can at least say you didn’t understand it. The point is, that you did something before (your homework) and looked at the obvious places like the manual (and maybe further websearch).

    People don’t like others being lazy and asking the questions that doesn’t need to be asked. That’s why RTFM exist. As much as you might take the “RTFM” as an offending answer, those people think of you question as offending too. Now there are people who use this term loosely in places when it is not appropriate. Also it depends on the audience. If your grandma tries to use a browser to watch funny cat videos, and asks how to use it, then it would be inappropriate to say RTFM. But if you have a Linux user who asks about how to use grep, then I think it is an appropriate reply.



  • No problem, it’s always good idea to ask.

    By convention two dashes -- are used for options with long name, such as --remove, while single dash - is used for single letter options such as -R. There can be some extra rules how options are used and combined, but that is not always true for every application. A common implementation is that options with single dash can be combined to have less to press, while double dash options cannot. Meaning if you have options -a -b -c then you could combine them into one bucket as -abc or -ab -c, all equivalent. But you cannot combine --remove -a -b into --abremove in example. There can be some extra rules and some applications handle options bit differently.












  • I don’t get why that is a problem. It’s just an option name with 2 dashes in front. In fact, that is the “correct” way of handling options, as in standard option processing in GNU / Linux. I personally dislike options without dash, but on the other hand it does not bother me enough to be bothered by it. pacman --remove is almost identical to pacman remove, so I don’t know why that is a “problem”.