Have a Laugh With Funny Linux Man Pages

Brief: Who says Linux command line is no fun? When you are in the mood of some naughty, geeky fun, read these witty man page entries. 

If you have been using Linux for some time, you might already be familiar with the term man pages. Mostly because you would have been advised by your colleague, friend or a total stranger on a Linux forum to RTFM (read the f***ing manpage).

Long before people start using search engines for each and everything, Linux users relied on the man pages to know how a certain Linux command works. It is still a great help.

But I am not going to talk about greatness or usefulness of the man pages. I am going to show you the witty side of man pages.

How about reading some witty man page entries?

[irp posts=”11506″ name=”Top 10 Command Line Games For Linux”]

Funny Man Pages: for some light-hearted Linux fun

Funny Man Pages in Linux

There is a package unsurprisingly called funny-manpages and it adds some witty entries to the man pages.

Before I show you a few examples, let me give you the same ‘warning’ that its description does:

A set of miscellaneous humorous manpages (don’t take them too seriously!). Includes, amongst others, rtfm (1). Warning! Some of these manpages might be treated offensive. You’ve been warned.

If you are not extra-sensitive and can tolerate stuff with a sexual overtone, you should be fine with these entries.

I think funny-manpages are available in most Linux distributions. You can install it using your distribution’s package manager. In Debian and Ubuntu based distributions, use the command below:

sudo apt install funny-manpages

Once you have this package installed, you can read some entries using the man command. For example, if you use command man celibacy, you’ll see an output like this:

Linux funny man pages

You can see the style of writing is identical to the real man page entries. While this particular entry is deliberately not big, some of the funny man page entries are well detailed.

NAME
baby — create new process from two parents

SYNOPSIS
baby -sex [m|f] [-name name]

DESCRIPTION
baby is initiated when one parent process polls another server process through a socket connection in the BSD version or through pipes in the System V implementation. baby runs at low prior‐
ity for approximately forty weeks and then terminates with a heavy system load. Most systems require constant monitoring when baby reaches its final stages of execution.

Older implementations of baby did not require both initiating processes to be present at the time of completion. In those versions the initiating process which was not present was awakened
and notified of the results upon completion. It has since been determined that the presence of both parent processes result in a generally lower system load at completion, and thus current
versions of baby expect both parent processes to be active during the final stages.

Successful completion of baby results in the creation and naming of a new process. Parent processes then broadcast messages to all other processes, local and remote, informing them of their
new status.

OPTIONS
-sex define the gender of the created process

-name assign the name name to the new process

EXAMPLES
baby -sex f -name Jacqueline

completed successfully on July 9, 1992 at 9:11pm. Jacqueline's vital statistics: 8 pounds 3 oz, 20 inches, long dark hair. The parent process, Kim Dunbar, is reportedly doing fine.

SEE ALSO
cigar(6), dump(5), cry(3).

BUGS
Despite its complexity, baby only knows one signal, SIGCHLD, (or SIGCLD in the System V implementation), which it uses to contact the parent processes. One or both parent processes must then
inspect the baby process to determine the cause of the signal.

The sleep(1) command may not work as expected on either parent process for some time afterward, as each new instance of baby sends intermittent signals to the parent processes which must be
handled by the parents immediately.

A baby process will frequently dump core, requiring either or both parent processes to clean up after it.

Despite the reams of available documentation on invoking and maintaining baby, most parent processes are overwhelmed.

Funny, isn’t it? Perhaps next time someone says RTFM, you could actually type man rtfm and read the entry:

NAME
rtfm - a response for easy questions from clueless lusers

SYNOPSIS
rtfm [ -p ] [ -h ] [ -d option ] [ -i interval ] [ -a action ] [ -q luser]

DESCRIPTION
rtfm is a command for system administrators to use in dealing with new users. rtfm is useful for dealing with users having trouble with their pictures downloaded from alt.binaries.pic‐
tures.erotica. rtfm will continue to run until killed by hand, using `kill processid'. rtfm can be invoked by anyone who has enough of a clue to know what a man page is.

OPTIONS
-p Give the answer in a polite fashion.

-h Tell the clueless luser to go to hell. Used with the -p option, they'll look forward to the trip.

Some of the other funny man page entries are sex, condom, flame, flog, gong, grope, party, rescrog etc.

If you find Linux man pages a bit boring, try reading these funny man pages. If you like referring to man pages, you would surely chuckle at these funny man pages.

About the author
Abhishek Prakash

Abhishek Prakash

Created It's FOSS 11 years ago to share my Linux adventures. Have a Master's degree in Engineering and years of IT industry experience. Huge fan of Agatha Christie detective mysteries 🕵️‍♂️

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