OK, maybe I didn't really make my point here. Sorry for not being very clear. When I was a n00b and didn'trickh wrote:...I often use Google to search for "man <progname>" Almost without fail, I find an expanded man page with appropriate examples...
know how to seek help (cuz that's something you have to, naturally, learn first) I'd go around and ask ppl
in forums or IRC channels, etc. Some of them helped me by saying: "Search the boards, search google, search
howtos, THEN ask questions!". Which is cool. Others again, and these are quite frequent, just diss you w/a
very lame comment so that you feel like crap for even asking help. I've seen it happening on this forum as well
(though not so frequently) and I think that as an open source family we should be different in this respect.
Of course, it's alright to diss flagrantly lazy ppl who abuse your kindness, but mostly it isn't this. Many Windows
users for example have never learnt how to ask for help properly. It's "call the hotline for instant help"
and not "we'll help you a li'l bit so you can help yourself"
And, yeah, the man pages are not always very inteligable for desktop users, hence the need to google
for howtos after being puzzled about man pages. Of course, it gets easier with time, but not always.
Some have very cool examples underneath (gzip, 7z, zip,...), others are just a bit cryptic. I get a bit
frustrated when I see ppl giving advice to n00bs like "read the man page and don't waste oru time" for
things like cron that really need a more thorough intro. I kinda get the impression they're making fun of them.