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Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but how do I find out about "apropos"? I've been using Linux daily for 16 years now and this is -- really! -- the first time I've heard about this command.

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Ditto that.

I came to Linux from a DOS background, where I was pretty proficient. My first attempt went down in flames and I didn't come back for years.

Now that I've learned it enough to consider myself 'good' (but not 'expert'), I prefer it. That took a LONG time. Longer than it took for DOS, actually.

Like I said.. the shell should offer a tutorial by default on first login.

And 'help' should probably be a built-in (like it is in fish!) that explains how to navigate the help files, and give a brief introduction to the shell.

The non-obviousness of these commands is not an inherent flaw of the CLI, it's an implementation error.

Even better than a tutorial, have the shell pass any unrecognized commands to apropos or a help program. This would make things much more discoverable.

This Altix machine I work on does this:

  @tg-login1:~> crap
    If 'crap' is not a typo you can run the following command to   lookup the package that contains the binary:
       command-not-found crap
  -bash: crap: command not found`

The Ubuntu machine I work on does this:

    stavros@stavrosvise ~> crap
    fish: Unknown command “crap”
    No command 'crap' found, did you mean:
     Command 'cap' from package 'capistrano' (universe)
     Command 'czap' from package 'dvb-apps' (universe)
     Command 'crip' from package 'crip' (universe)
     Command 'grap' from package 'grap' (universe)
    crap: command not found