This guy’s mind is going to explode when someone introduces him to stuff like services, cron jobs, systemd triggers and timers, and unattended-upgrades.
Also, you should almost never change swappiness.
The more you get into using Linux, the more likely you are to start using the Terminal for various tasks. Now, I’ll admit that you don’t need to do everything in the Terminal. But I truly believe knowing your way around it is pretty vital to the Linux experience (for me, anyway), whether it’s learning basic short commands or playing video through the Terminal.
To make Linux more palatable to Windows and macOS users, I think it’s important to shift as much of the Linux experience away from the terminal and into GUI programs as possible.
To make Linux more palatable to Windows and macOS users, I think it’s important to shift as much of the Linux experience away from the terminal and into GUI programs as possible.
Nope. LLMs have opened the door to nearly everything that’s ever been searched for or commited to the internet, and roughly none of that is going to be PDFs with screenshots of how to click through the GUI equivalent of grepping for “foo” and “bar” in a file that may or may not have a space, in files that end in .biz, but only files from the last month or so.
The world is full of crummy Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). Want teams to always show you online? Just do this one weird trick with the mouse sensor! Need the dog to come to you for its bath? Rattle its food bag. The terminal setup UNIX has had for decades turns out to be a pretty good way to control a computer. Whether we’ve molded ourselves to fit the 70s terminal paradigm or whether we just happened on a really good solution right out of the gate is a pretty interesting question.
The learning curve for a terminal isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and its various DSLs being Turing complete mean that at the top of the learning curve is a massive amount of efficiency. GUIs are there to limit complexity, so while it may make the inital first usage of a computer easier it ultimately caps how powerful/efficient someone can be. There are people who research that kind of thing, but you’ll have a very tough time selling VIM users on the idea that notepad.exe is a text editor just like VIM is, but newer.
Most of the complaints about Windows 11 that I’ve read/noticed are around how much it “helps” you by doing little searches all the time trying to guess what you want. Those turn 10ms tasks into 250ms tasks which seems like petty whining until you have to do it a thousand times a day and “ls” has been around for 50 years now.
The market will decide for us so it’s a moot point; I just like to shit on Windows.
I agree. GUIs should not be seen as replacements for CLIs so that new users switch to Linux. There are an addition to the ecosystem; and when you want to do more with your computer and perhaps more efficiently, new users can learn more about what can be done in the Terminal.
When done right they complement each other. I’m not going to sit here and argue everyone should be handjamming their own XFree86 config file but there are still a lot of austere environments out there where you don’t really get a GUI. A basic knowledge of VI can go a very long way and as long as someone doesn’t go out of their way to disable terminal access the capability never stops being useful.
Kiosks are a good example of a GUI-only environment, but I’d never want to use one as my main computing environment and don’t understand wanting to be limited to that world (which is not what anyone here has suggested).
The average user can’t be expected to remember all of the commands needed to use their regularly used programs, and those that don’t want to shouldn’t be expected to.
For instance, the terminal could be used to reformat storage devices, but MintStick essentially replicates the Windows GUI for doing it, making the transition less cumbersome for the average user.
The more users Linux has the more resources it will get. For power users, nothing stops developers from also maintaining terminal support.
The average user can’t be expected to remember all of the commands needed to use their regularly used programs
They were expected to do so for decades, or they hired a computer (as in a person) to do it for them ($$$).
the terminal could be used to reformat storage devices, but MintStick essentially replicates the Windows GUI for doing it
Depends on what you mean by “doing it.” I’ll look in a second, but from the name and your description I’m guessing it’s got parted/mkfs.xxxx/dd and the lot installed on it, maybe something for dealing with boot sectors or GRUB. I’m also guessing that behind the scenes it’s just using a GUI to build up the command line behind the scenes, and I like that style of GUI.
The more users Linux has the more resources it will get.
Concur.
For power users, nothing stops developers from also maintaining terminal support.
UX design/GUI development isn’t entirely orthogonal with backend core program stuff, but they’re close. I’ll argue that you’re better off starting with the core stuff and save the GUI for later.
I looked at the mintstick code. It looks like it’s using python to pull down some OS image from the internet and burn it to a USB. I’d rather just stick to the way I know :-) I didn’t know python had a parted library, so that’s new.
I am all for more people knowing how to use a computer, but I’m also in the camp that I ate the learning curve enough years ago that I don’t want to give up my ways. I don’t expect everyone to want to master the terminal, but I won’t give up the power in favor whatever a GUI designer chooses to implement. The trade isn’t worth it to me.
I think these things need to exist in balance so that new users who are fleeing macOS and Windows have GUIs and programs to interact with to make managing the system easier for them at first. Leaving the terminal based methods for those with weirder/simpler tastes. As I am a mixed style user: I prefer the terminal for most things but GUI for other tasks.
I don’t think his set-up is in any way negating the push for creating GUIs and programs used to interact with the system, but it does showcase the peculiar tastes of some Linux users. Highlighting the strength of Linux distros as a whole: It can do both and do it reasonably well. Though most nerds need to be reminded to implement GUIs so that new people can gradually learn Linux. As creating a safety net, promotes a calmer user experience for those learning enough to get by and understand instructions when they need to fix the rare weird issue.
I don’t conside rMac and windows user to be humans. They should either learn terminal or stay in their barn
To make Linux more palatable to Windows and macOS users, I think it’s important to shift as much of the Linux experience away from the terminal and into GUI programs as possible.
this, the Linux users happy on terminal are there already, if you want more users you need a better GUI experience, most of that can be done with better official support for Flatpacks IMO. Sure I can jump into the Terminal to get Signal for my Linux desktop, update to include the Signal repo etc but… why ffs.
Sure I can jump into the Terminal to get Signal for my Linux desktop, update to include the Signal repo etc but… why ffs.
Needing to run
pacmanfrom the terminal is the biggest thing holding me back from recommending it more to others (GUIs exist but they’re either pretty complicated or they’re pamac, which has its own flaws). I’ve been semi-tempted to try writing my own, but it’s actually somewhat complicated to match the system theme across DEs.Flatpak makes it a lot simpler of course and has a nice user experience outside of the terminal, but a lot of things don’t work well as Flatpaks.
