The Only Linux Tech Support You Need
Description
A classic two-panel 'Drake Hotline Bling' meme format with a yellow-orange background. In the top panel, the rapper Drake, wearing an orange puffer jacket, holds up a hand in a gesture of disapproval. The text to the right reads: 'Explaining the solution to a problem to a new GNU/Linux user'. In the bottom panel, Drake is smiling and pointing in a gesture of approval. The text to the right simply says: 'RTFM!'. A small watermark 'imgflip.com' is visible in the bottom left corner. The meme satirizes a common and often criticized aspect of the Linux community culture, where experienced users impatiently dismiss newcomers' questions with the acronym 'RTFM' ('Read The F***ing Manual') instead of providing direct help. It highlights the community's strong emphasis on self-learning and personal research, which can sometimes come across as hostile or un welcoming to beginners
Comments
30Comment deleted
Telling a new user to 'RTFM' is the most efficient way to delegate a task directly to the original author of the software
Sure, you could spoon-feed the answer - but then who’s going to grep the man pages at 3 AM during the next outage?
After 20 years in tech, I've learned that 'RTFM' is just senior engineer speak for 'I had to suffer through cryptic man pages written in 1987, and so should you' - though honestly, half the time the manual references another manual that references a mailing list from 2003
The eternal paradox of Linux communities: we want more adoption and diversity, yet our first instinct when someone asks 'how do I...' is to respond with 'RTFM' and a link to a 20-year-old man page written in the passive voice by someone who assumed you already understood the problem. Then we wonder why desktop Linux market share hasn't moved past 3%. At least the documentation is comprehensive - assuming you can parse the arcane syntax, understand the historical context of why three different config file formats exist for the same daemon, and already know what you're looking for
RTFM: the original idempotent operation - run it once, and users either learn or self-select out of production
RTFM is a great time-saver - if you optimize for your own P99 latency and ignore system throughput; show them man -k, tldr, and the Arch Wiki once, and your ticket queue finally scales
Classic scalability hack: replace O(n) hand-holding with a constant-time ‘RTFM’ pointer - until the amortized cost returns as repeat tickets, shadow IT, and pager fatigue
what if there are no manuals for the problem? "KDE2 patch for FreeBSD" "legacy proprietary nvidia drivers on new kernels" "outdated localized manuals (who uses them anyway)" "manpages are wrong, irrelevant or even outdated sometimes" Comment deleted
Moodle Comment deleted
then you make the user write their own userland Comment deleted
then just make the user write their own os Comment deleted
yeah, if only there was a way to use windows without sponsoring the corporate machine... Comment deleted
if only… Comment deleted
yeah well you're still supporting it with your private date Comment deleted
there's some tools to help with that, but my main OS is linux anyway, so… Comment deleted
"the best way of using windows is not to" - me, right now Comment deleted
how would you open a window Comment deleted
irl of course Comment deleted
I don't 😎 Comment deleted
have you ever touched grass? Comment deleted
yeah with silk touch, why? Comment deleted
i see you are a man of culture as well Comment deleted
also in pokemon Comment deleted
I don't. I have a tabbed …window…manager… uhhh ignore that Comment deleted
lmao Comment deleted
Reject modernity, return to getty Comment deleted
reject modernity, return to woods ooga booga. wayland? yeah, there's a way in this land. it goes to my friend, fred Comment deleted
getty is literally woods Comment deleted
literally me frfr Comment deleted
msys2? Comment deleted