Thats the neat part, we dont need to and theres literally no benefit in doing so. Heres the cycle
Linux user suggests Linux to eveyone (like a dumbass) -> people install Linux -> its not a Windows clone -> people get pissed and complain (without doing anything constructive) -> people reinstall Windows
The fact is the more nontechnical people use Linux the more complaints maintainers get, the less detailed bug reports become, and the increase to funding/contributions will be mininal if even noticeable.
If you see having to use the terminal as a failure of the operating system then you shouldn’t use Linux
You don’t have to live in the terminal, but the amount of people who treat the terminal like it’s lava is too damn high.
This is the kind of mindset that prevents mass adoption of Linux. Sure the terminal should be available but there still should be distros catering to less tech-savvy people if we want the year of the Linux desktop to arrive at all. Some governments are looking to replace Windows with Linux, and you cannot expect the average desk worker to know or even care about doing stuff in a terminal.
You don’t need to do everything on the terminal – even today, you don’t have to. But you should not fear the terminal, the same way you should not fear a piano because you play a violin. Windows also has a terminal, there’s stuff that tells you to go there to enable some Powershel things, and no one complains.
Great comparison, because playing either piano or violin is beyond 99% of all people who just want to listen to music. Common users and office workers have never even heard of Powershell.
You should not have to learn for years before being comfortable using a computer. If everyone has to do that it’s not something that will be adopted widely, as we can obviously see with Linux on Desktop. It’s both a Software problem (either lack thereof or bad design) as well as a culture problem; the latter is what I criticize, because it’s so utterly unnecessary and alienates common people.
And the Windows Shell really isn’t comparable, it’s 100% optional.
You don’t need years for a terminal, at least not for the stuff a normal user would have to expect to do with it (so eg.: not browsing files, that has good UIs already). But you should expect to have to learn something. We require people to learn and even certify their learning when they are to drive a car for example, and for computers we are not even askng 1/6th of that, even tho the last few decades show we maybe should.
Learn for years? Dude you just search on the internet if you need to find out how to do something in the terminal that you don’t know how to do. This isn’t the 90s where you had to have a bookshelf of technical manuals to install and run your favorite distro.
Terminal usage is a tool just like GUI tools, I don’t think it’s helpful either to preload people with the belief that it’s some arcane tool that takes years before you can start using it, like anything you pick it up by doing.
Can’t really say it’s 100% optional as a blanket case either, heavily depends on a user, my work I’ve depended on having a terminal for years, and that was even before I moved into SWE, I’ve seen lots of business developed processes put together as an amalgam of batch files, VBA/VBS, and python because they needed to put something together with what they had rights to.
Be honest that I don’t see the terminal as a barrier to Linux anyhow, for the use case of “I browse the internet and use office programs”, you absolutely do not need to drop to the CLI, at least not for Debian or Mint, can handle installs and updates through their graphical package managers. Most people probably aren’t setting up services or the like on their machines, and if they are they already require terminal usage on any operating system.
That just isn’t how novice users interact with a computer, though. Most mainstream OSes have GUI for anything you’d need to do as a novice.
Touching virtual buttons on a multitouch screen wasn’t how novice users interacted with a computer until it was.
To me this feels like recommending Android to someone and then people on social media saying that I’m elitist for expecting someone to use a computer with only a touchscreen when everyone knows that you interact with computers with a mouse and keyboard.
I’m not speaking hypothetically, this was the exact argument people were using when smartphones were still nerd toys and not a standard part of human experience. “Nobody will ever use them”, “they’re too confusing”, “typing on a screen is too clunky at least my flip phone has buttons”.
People can learn. As soon as the iPhone came out suddenly everyone was capable of using a touchscreen interface and learning a new OS.
Linux isn’t for everyone. But if you’re going to choose make the leap to Linux, you will be using the terminal occasionally. You don’t have to be a terminal-only user, most people use a GUI for daily tasks.
As long as you’re okay learning how to do some basic terminal tasks you’ll be fine. But if you come into with the mindset that the terminal shouldn’t be needed and get upset at people for telling you otherwise, you’re going to have a bad time.
Absolutely! Honestly I feel like human apathy towards leaning new things has increased exponentially over the years. People are thinking less and less, especially with Ai enabling people to put their brain in a jar and forgo critical thinking themselves.
Nah, that’s wrong.
I am very proficient with the terminal. But there are many use cases when I want a OS that does not need the terminal at all. For instances media dedicated pcs.
I have a pc that I only use from the couch, for playing games a viewing media, and using the terminal from my remote size keyboard is a bore, I would prefer a 100% gui solution for that usage.
For gaming and media consumption, you can run Steam Big Picture Mode or Plex/Jellyfin which are designed for controller use.
But you’re not doing system administration with a TV remote on any operating system. By having a system that you can fully control from the terminal, you can just ssh into it to fix any issues without wasting system resources on a GUI that you will rarely use.
Unfortunately I use Windows at work and I constantly use the CLI. I probably use the CLI more on Linux, but I’m generally doing really awesome stuff on Linux and really dumb stuff on Windows.
If you’re just a regular chud consumer, then maybe you don’t need it on either OS.
Giving the would-be linux newbs the benefit of the doubt, IF they have any terminal experience at all it is with CMD/PowerShell. I don’t blame them one bit for wanting to banish all terminals into the shadow realms, they had a traumatic experience.
Been using Linux for almost two decades now. Mostly Ubuntu and now recently Linux Mint.
True Linux users build their own kernel and distro from scratch from an environment running directly in EFI
Pff, I carve my own CPUs from compacted sand, like real men.
I don’t compile, I flip the CPU instruction switches manually while reading directly from the source code.
@wander1236 @Lexam with tcc, this should be possible…
https://github.com/andreiw/tinycc
There’s an OS that doesn’t require command line use to do anything slightly advanced? That hasn’t been my experience.
I’m pretty comfortable on the command line, but I also won’t hesitate to boot a live disk and
dd if=/dev/zerothe main hard drive the moment my gui refuses to load.Yep, same. The main thing Linux has taught me over the years is to keep good, regular backups of everything important.
I’ve lost way too much data already by fucking up grub somehow, or by accidentally letting windows overwrite the efi partition or some bullshit. I know how to recover from that now, but back in the day when I was doing dumb shit to my os pretty much every day, I didn’t.
That was all 100% my own fault btw
The simple mans solution.
A true mainstream Linux distro would need guidelines like this:
- The user is never be expected to type a command into a terminal.
- The user is never be expected to edit a configuration file.
- There is a graphical UI for every possible action the user might want to (or have to) do.
This especially includes:
- Configuring audio devices
- Installing graphics drivers
- Updating the operating system
- Managing applications and storage space
- Connecting to networked storage
- Adjusting kernel parameters (This is neccessary on certain hardware, yet, barely any distro has a graphical UI for it.)
The only distro that comes close to this is Linux Mint, but not even Mint covers everything I just mentioned.
If we want Linux to succeed, there needs to be at least one distro that confidently ships without a terminal.
Windows doesn’t even cover everything you just said. The number of times Windows 10 broke my Bluetooth devices and I had to much around in registry to remove the device profile just to try to repair the device, is part of the reason I switched to Linux in the first place.
Yes, many distros need a little refining and smoothing for the general public, but only because people are so used to dealing with bullshit troubleshooting on Windows that they don’t see it as bullshit anymore.
That’s a low bar, but importantly they’re still correct that technically Windows looks like it can handle those things as far as a regular consumer can see. Windows is unholy trash, but it at least doesn’t tell people who can’t even navigate their basic file explorer that they are expected to use scary terminal commands they likely found on a forum or third-party website.
Personally I think a little more tinkering spirit would do the whole world good, not just with computers, but reality is the way that it is for the moment(things can change, fingers crossed).
No pc OS available meets your requirements for this lol, not linux, windowns or crapple osx
Sure would be nice if linux was the first available though.
Counterpoint: why should the standard for “just works” mean no CLI? What if distro maintainers decide that their user’s experience is improved by relegating some tasks to the shell?
Because knowing terminal commands is neither accessible nor feasible for the average computer user. It might be more efficient, if you take the time to learn it but the average computer user doesn’t want to spend that extra time. They want everything to be accessible and to be easy.
Linux should always have the choice to use the terminal. But if you want the day of the Linux desktop to actually arrive some day, you need at least a couple of distros that don’t require you to know what a package manager is.
neither accessible nor feasible for the average computer user.
Absolute hogwash. Learning like five short words is absolutely not unfeasible for any literate person, if a user can’t do that, you can be sure they aren’t actually an average user, they can’t do anything with gui either. And probably need help tying their shoes.
A two years old child can learn 5 short words. A grown up can write them on a sticky note and plop them on a screen.A good modern gui also presents itself in front of you. It directs your attention to important buttons/options. You don’t need any prior knowledge to know that a cog shaped button labeled settings will take you to settings. Good UIs are self explanatory. CLI are not.
To be able to use the terminal, you either need another person to tell you the necessary commands or search for a tutorial yourself, either online or somewhere else.
That’s not intuitive. It’s not too hard to learn, but you need to actively pursue learning how to do it. An average person doesn’t want to do that. An average person doesn’t even want to memorize more than one password. They should. But they won’t. Thus, password managers were created. And non technical minded people still don’t even use those.
You got to look at it from the point of view of someone who has no interest in knowing any more about their computer than how to turn it on, where to put their photos and how to open their browser and maybe an office suite. The kind of people that wouldn’t even update the system, if there wasn’t a notification asking for it. They’re not stupid. They just don’t care about computers and don’t want to spend any more mental power on them than necessary, the same way you wouldn’t want to think about manually keeping the timing of your car’s engine on point for the current conditions. You just want it to get you safely from A to B. Or maybe you do, but I assure you, most people wouldn’t.
self explanatory
If you ever had to teach anyone anything, properly teach, you would know it’s a myth. It’s self-explanatory to you because you’re already familiar with the logic, language, conventions. I’m guessing, you grew up with all that from childhood, and you just forgot how you had to learn all that, and now you assume this knowledge didn’t need to be taught. You think cog is a universally understood language for settings because you always had it in front of you. Just like a lot of people think/thought that 3.5 floppy is a universally understood icon for “save”, and people who grow up in more recent time have no idea what I am talking about.
And then you assume that you are the average person, and start measuring everyone by this mark.
But if several years of teaching people of different skills, motivations, and ages, how to work with computers taught me anything, it’s that there is no universal language, there is no, and cannot be anything self-explanatory, and intuitive interface is a myth perpetuated by people who newer used anything other that one OS they grew up with. There is no amount of skeuomorphism you can employ that doesn’t require at least some amount of learning.
And when it comes to learning, let me tell you, there is nothing more straightforward to teach than “you type words and then read what the computer typed you back.”
And if several years of tech support taught me anything, it’s that if a regular person who doesn’t care about a computer encounters a problem, they don’t have inherently better time fixing it with GUI, never, not at all, not in a million years. I however always have way better time helping them, if it’s Linux and I can tell them what to type and they can read me the response. This actually true even if people are good with computers and know their OS.It’s self-explanatory to you because you’re already familiar with the logic, language, conventions. I’m guessing, you grew up with all that from childhood…
This argument can be used as a reason to implement GUIs.
If we wish to market to an audience that has had some basic experience with using Windows and Mac, we can skip some of the reteaching by implementing familiar GUIs
Most people didn’t grew up with Windows or Mac, that was a blip in time, most people grew up with a phone. When it comes to PC they’re a blank slate, they will have as much familiarity with the idea of a Windows start menus as they are with Linux console. That is to say, they saw it in a movie.
Most people do know how to use a computer though. Windows and macOS have been around for a very long time by now, and both have not required you to use the CLI for anything but very extreme cases in more than 25 years. You’re not starting with a blank slate. They know how a GUI is supposed to work. It is self explanatory to them. Shoving them towards a CLI is making them relearn stuff they already knew how to do. There’s a reason a lot of Windows migrants end up with KDE or Cinnamon. It’s familiar, it’s easy. Most people do in fact associate a cog with settings. CLI aren’t familiar to most people and thus a much larger hurdle.
Also, I’m not talking about fixing problems. The CLI is a perfectly valid tool to fix problems. Not everything has to be graphical. Just enough that you don’t need it unless something breaks.
Most people do know how to use a computer though.
That was kind of true for a brief period of time. And even then it wasn’t true entirely. Now most people encounter a computer when they enter the workforce. They know shit about shit, they never had to tinker with computers, most of them never had one outside of some chromebook that allowed them to render two web pages. In most cases they start from basically blank slate.
Most people do in fact associate a cog with settings.
Most people don’t know that it’s cog. Most people don’t know it’s a button. Most people don’t have concept of a button in mind. Most people entering workforce right this moment never used a mouse to press a cog button in their life. Unless they’re in IT or engineering.
Also, I’m not talking about fixing problems
This is usually when you kind of required to use console on Linux, that’s why I was talking about it.
But my broader point was against so called intuitive self-explanatory nature of the menu you have to click with your mouse.
Of course they know how to use a computer. They don’t know a thing about how a computer works but that doesn’t mean they can’t use it. Heck, my 8 y/o cousin can figure out how to open and play Minecraft on his tablet. No need for him to know about commands, programming languages and bits n bytes.
Most people these days know how to use their phones, at the very least, and even there cog = settings. Most people don’t know how to use a CLI or how a spreadsheet program works, but they certainly can use a browser on a computer. Which is also a form of using a computer.
And maybe they don’t explicitly know it’s a button. But they know if they tap or click on a cog it takes them to settings.
And even figuring out how a mouse works is a thing of a few seconds, if all you’ve used before was a touchscreen (or even nothing at all). There‘s a reason they took off in the first place.
Although, if someone truly has never used a computer in any shape or form before. No smartphone, no tablet, not even a smart TV, you‘d probably have a point that it’s not much more difficult for them to learn the common iconography than it would be to learn the CLI. But people rarely start with such a blank slate today.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a good thing, people are less and less tech literate these days. But my point is, tech illiteracy doesn’t mean they have never used any computer ever and do not know what an app- or settings-icon is. I’d wager it’s more the other way around: People are so used to their devices working and their UIs looking pretty (and very samey) that iconography like cogs for settings are especially self explanatory to them. It’s the same on their phone, tablet and even TV after all.
Eh. I’m mostly a power user, all day at work in terminals and keyboard shortcut galore.
It doesn’t prevent me from laying back and running a “filthy casual” kubuntu with little to no setup at all. At one point you reach the state where you just want to use your computer, not tinker with it all the time.
This is why Arch never stuck for me. I work with Linux all day. I don’t want to spend my free time fixing my own shit because a update broke the bootloader.
Well yea, Linux is about learning how the computer works; wheras windows wants to hide it
No. This may be the case for some distros like Gentoo or Arch, but applying this to the whole ecosystem and expecting everyone to even be interested in computers (which they should not fucking have to be to use a user-friendly Linux) is what alienates people.
Exactly. If Linux expects me to open a program before I can use it, that’s already too complicated for most people. I want to just tell the computer what I want and have it so it for me. I don’t want to know what a file is or what Firefox does, leave that nerd shit out of my OS.
Then go to apple or smth?
Using the terminal is actually telling the computer what to do.
Linux is community made and it will kill itself it it doesn’t reproduce.
Linix needs people to understand it, so we can maintain it.
iPhone is too complicated for most people who don’t want to know what an app is
My dad who retires today and who has been a Windows user since roughly 1993 has set up multiple Pi-Holes and OpenVPN in the last few years and recently even installed Ubuntu in WSL so he can run bash scripts locally too. He’s not in a tech job, he’s a doctor.
A year ago my friend who has been using Windows for his gaming for the last 22 years asked my to help him set up a Fedora dual boot. Just to play around with, even though he doesn’t have a tech background. He didn’t really use it much. But today his work had him blocked by their own fuck-up and he decided to use the time to try it out again.
This evening he told me about how he upgraded his Fedora back to a current version using GUI tools. Then he saw that Windows wasn’t the default boot in his grub boot order anymore. He tried to find an app for editing grub, realised this was the kind of thing people do with CLI. So in the next two hours he learned enough CLI using a free beginners lesson he found online somewhere, until he found the
historycommand, where he found the grub command we used during the original setup. He was so excited about this success!I think the CLI criticisms are way overblown, and non-programmers can use CLIs perfectly well if they want to.
I think people have trama from Windows CMD and DOS
It is much nicer these days
I think a good portion of the people complaining have never touched DOS, maybe CMD once or twice with a tutorial online (which sounds a whole lot like some stackexchange user teaching me about bluez, but this is scarier because they were told linux hard.)
What scares me is that I’ve tried to hook multiple “geekier” teenagers on Linux, and they aren’t interested. Even the math-y ones don’t know the difference between an operating system and a browser. My main computer is Arch with xmonad and it disturbs and confuses them.
We have a lost generation when it comes to computers. Lots of the little geeks that would have been playing around in the registry or learning powershell 15 years ago are so stuck in walled gardens that they don’t even know there’s a world outside of them.
What if… You trolled someone by installing Linux, but with a GUI that 100% mimics Windows? 🤔
Actually, fuck trolling. I want this. Gimme the OG Windows 95 GUI for KDE/Gnome.
deleted by creator
There’s quite some hypocrisy in learning to use windows, its obscure registry and the shady softwares that will tune it while refusing to copy commands in a terminal.
Yeah, but regedit is a GUI. So it’s all cool and dandy.
Actually, yes. Because it’s just data. It might change system behaviors in annoying ways when programs read that data, but it’s just data.
Executing curl | sudo bash because docker said so, or some flavor of the week python packages manager says so, or because you want to run tailscale and your distro doesn’t have a package…any of those scenarios relies much much much much much more on trust and is a major security flaw in how applications are distributed on Linux.
