> I remember being a kid looking at DOS and wondering “what do I even do?”
The DOS we had came with a few-hundred page manual. The same for any major programs that ran on it. These must have been exhaustive, as I don't remember being stuck at any point, honestly.
Jup. But where in the terminal does it tell you that (A) there are man pages and (B) how to look at them?
The answer is: It doesn't tell you anything. So either you grew up in a time where computers with terminals were new and interesting enough for you to try, or you were a teenager that was bored enough to try, or you had somebody show/tell you.
The DOS we had came with a few-hundred page manual. The same for any major programs that ran on it. These must have been exhaustive, as I don't remember being stuck at any point, honestly.