The Linux man command

The first command I'll introduce will help you understand all the other commands.

Every time I don't know how to use a command, I type man <command> to get the manual:

This is a man (from _manual_) page. Man pages are an essential tool to learn as a developer. They contain so much information that sometimes it's almost too much. The above screenshot is just 1 of 14 screens of explanation for the ls command.

Most of the time when I need to learn a command quickly I use this site called tldr pages: https://tldr.sh. It's a command you can install, which you then run like this: tldr <command>. It gives you a very quick overview of a command, with some handy examples of common usage scenarios:

This is not a substitute for man, but a handy tool to avoid losing yourself in the huge amount of information present in a man page. Then you can use the man page to explore all the different options and parameters you can use on a command.