> I've never read a man page from start to finish, and I'm not sure you're meant to. When I was 16 and just starting to get into Linux, I got a tiny little pap

> I've never read a man page from start to finish, and I'm not sure you're meant to. When I was 16 and just starting to get into Linux, I got a tiny little paperback, "reference to Unix programs" or something. It was literally just a list of every single Unix program and a shortened version of its man page. I read it cover to cover. After that, if I needed to do something on the command line, I knew there was a program to do it and what its capabilities were. After a couple weeks I didn't need the reference anymore. I can't remember the book anymore, but this is basically what it was like: https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-v4man/v4man.pdf https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-v4man/v4man.pdf See if you can find a version newer than 1973, though... O'Reilly's Unix In A Nutshell isn't bad. Read your man pages cover to cover. It's for the same exact reason you learn a bunch of "useless BS" in school: to save you time down the road because you'll know where to go for the solution.