TLDR is a free command line utility for various Linux distributions that provides you with summaries of Linux commands on request.

Linux commands can be quite intimidating, especially if you are a new user. While you may use the man command to get information on a particular command, man descriptions are often not the easiest to go through.

That's where TLDR comes into play. It is a free tool that summarizes Linux commands for you so that you understand core functionality immediately and without going through pages full of descriptions (especially since parameters and options are not necessarily sorted by popularity).

The TLDR pages are a community effort to simplify the beloved man pages with practical examples.

The tool does not take man away, so that you can still use it if something is unclear, or if you want to dig deeper and get a full command listing and detailed description.

TLDR for Linux

The project's website has installation instructions for various clients, and there is also a web version that you can run to test the tool's functionality.

The core command is tldr command, e.g. tldr apt to get a summary of the commands that apt supports.

TLDR gives you a short description of the tool or command, and several important examples. For apt, it explains to you how to search for, install or remove updates for instance.

That's helpful compared to the several pages of commands and descriptions when you run man apt, provided that TLDR comes with an example that matches what the user wants to achieve.

Each example offers a description of what the full command does, and the full command afterwards making it easy to run these commands.

TLDR does not list all switches and options however. While you find popular examples listed for many commands, you may still need to use man at times, or another resource, to find out more about a particular command.

The program is available for Linux, but also for Android (TLDR Viewer), and iOS (TLDR Man Page).

Closing Words

TLDR is a handy utility for Linux users to get summaries of commands. These may help run commands without going through the full man pages first if a command is new, or if you cannot remember it exactly.

Summary Author Rating 5 based on 7 votes Software Name TLDR Operating System Linux Software Category Administration Landing Page http://tldr.sh/

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