What are cheat and tldr and when should you use them?
tldr and cheat are community-written, example-first cheatsheets — they answer "just show me how to use this command" without the exhaustive detail of a full man page.
They exist because man pages are reference documents, not tutorials. The tar man page is thousands of words covering every flag; but 90% of the time you just want "how do I make an archive again?" tldr answers exactly that with a handful of copy-pasteable examples:
$ tldr tar
- Create an archive:
tar -cvf archive.tar file1 file2
- Extract an archive:
tar -xvf archive.tar
So think of them as complementary, not competing, tools — chosen by the question you're asking:
| You're asking… | Reach for |
|---|---|
| "How do I use this command, quickly?" | tldr / cheat |
"What does the -z flag do exactly?" |
man (the authoritative detail) |
| "What command even does this?" | apropos (search by keyword) |
sudo dnf install tldr # install on Red Hat–family systems
tldr --update # download the latest example pages
Tip: start with tldr when you half-remember a command, and fall back to man only when you need the precise meaning of a specific option — it turns "I'll just google it" into a local, offline lookup.