Linux Experts Read 'info' Pages (NOT 'man' pages)

Become A Channel Member:

SOCIALS
----------------

[BRUH.]

I've been using linux for over 3 years now and this is how I learn about info pages? I didn't even know they existed! Thanks!

[tineocedric]

linux has this way of always making you feel stupid. Man pages ? no, info pages. But not all the time, and there are exceptions and sometimes it's the opposite, and nobody will tell you how it really works, but will make you feel like you're dumb for not knowing... gotta love this. Now tell me that i'm dumb and the only person who feels this way.

[xfolling]

As a socially well adjusted linux enthusiast, this is my favourite youtube video!

[dave]

Great video. I've been using Linux for years and was completely unaware of info pages.

[SMTM]

Also have not heard of info pages in years of using Linux

However I do often use TLDR to quickly find common invocations of commands with more complex flags.

Another thing I will note is that --help usually also works on subcommands, which is something that surprisingly many people don't realize.

[BramSLI]

I've been studying and using Linux for going on 4 years now and this is the first time hearing about the info pages. Thank you so much for posting this video!

[der.Schtefan]

OMG! I totally forgot info pages even existed!!!! I spent half my childhood reading them, in the narrow window between having Linux installed on CD/DVD, but before I got internet.
I found the navigation cumbersome back then though, but I forgot why.

[meneerjansen]

Been using Linux for over 15 years as my daily driver, never heard of 'info'. Thanks man! 😀

[ksbs]

Back when I used v7/BSD4.1/SysIII *all* the information was in the man pages. They were your standard terse UNIX documents but it was mostly all there. For instance the SH (no BASH back then) detailed the whole SH programming language, I/O redirection, traps, execs, sourcing, etc. That's all been stripped out and put into INFO pages (mostly, kinda). I'm an old curmudgeon so I don't really see the additional utility of INFO over MAN and find that splitting information over multiple systems is just confusing. Also, until you start digging nobody really talks about the basic architecture of a UNIX system and that MAN(2) [section 2] tells you everything that the kernel can do. Additionally it isn't really emphasized that a running UNIX system consists of two types of things --- (1) processes and (2) files. Nothing else. Networking kinda broke that model but sigh.

[dzanful]

This is how I actually learned the `sed` command. Also worth mentioning is that `info info` gives useful information on how to navigate through pages, you can even customize the interface and define your own key bindings.

[mikemccartneyable]

Very useful, thanks for sharing. I noticed two examples ... there is no man page for 'man coreutils' ... but 'info coreutils' supplies loads of information. Also 'info builtin' simply supplies what is available in 'man builtin'

[discreaderror]

As a new learner to this stuff, this is so validating to my experience. Thank you. You are a saint among men.

[Chalisque]

It's worth knowing (I didn't know until I did a little googling inspired by this video) that KDE's Konqueror has a built-in info viewer if you want something presented like in a web browser.

[mikehosken]

This is why I love Unix, GNU/Linux. So many great features built in.

[rogo]

Some programs have very extensive manpage, like Tor server or OpenSSH for the command itself and for configuration files. The main difference between manpages and info is that man always opens one single scroll for you to read. info command is more like interactive browsing an html documentation in browser and has not very obvious keybindings that I always forget (even though I'm everyday user of vim and tmux).

[CozenBrooch]

You just added another rabbit hole for me to go down. Now I’m going to learn all the coreutils I don’t know by heart.

[MrOlivm]

You’ve got to mention ‘help [builtin]’ for the shell. ‘type’ is good. ‘declare -p’ is worth a mention in investigating the environment. MANPATH. Idk where info pages come from in fs.

[brothertyler]

I had absolutely no idea that these existed, despite using these systems for almost a decade. There's an XKCD comic about that.

[planetcrypto]

Feeling like an imposter is my favorite feeling.

[deudz]

3:40 im pretty sure to get info page for bash on debain based you need to install the bash-doc package