linuxmemes

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.

I can understand people not wanting to learn a ton of CLIs, I cannot understand people refusing to use any at all. They have the distinct advantage that you can copy + paste stuff, whereas in Windows you sometimes have to follow like a dozen steps to do whatever you want to do in a 2000s GUI.

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.

I have no idea what CLI is. I just use Mint and don't put much thought in.

I believe Linux distros aimed at nontechnical users should strive to not need a user to ever use a terminal, but I also believe folks should be encouraged to try them anyways.

Grew up with ms-dos. Spent half my career in telnet and ssh consoles.

When I just want to play Balatro at the end of a long day fuck any system that requires more than click click to get me in.

That's why I'm switching to Linux when windows 10 is no longer supported because fuck win 11 and the amount of regedits it's gonna take to get that working.

“I don’t want to learn/use the CLI” is equivalent to saying “I only want to use features that have a GUI”, which you can already do on any operating system (including Linux).

nah fuck that noise. thats what i use.

its good to know it more deeply, but i want the practicality of a stable system that gets out of the way of my shitposting.

if anything, easy stable distros are more worthy because it allows just anyone to ditch windows. instead of being a nerd's plaything, that is.

It's open source, they can just make their own distro.

Remember to build everything from source

I'll be honest, as a macos & Linux user, even macos, the (self proclaimed) Holy Grail of accessibility and user friendliness,required me to run a few commands to fix bugs (not in weird softwares, just stuff which stopped working through reboots in the OS itself).

You can't expect to use a computer without CLI, or what you get is windows (and even then, you might get around the CLI but you gonna need to do some cursed regedit at the first attempt of slight customization, or bug).

The only exception to this is phones, and for good reason; you hardly can do shit in phones anyway, and if it bugs all you can do is wait for the devs to fix it for you

It's always going to feel like this even if you never need a terminal for one simple reason:

When you google "how to XX on linux," you're going to find a stackexchange page where someone else asked, and someone answered with a terminal command instead of "Ok what DE are you using? Ok, so you're gonna want to click these seventeen different menu options, and I don't remember them without looking at them myself." It's just always going to be easier to send someone a string of ~30char to type than to try and figure out their GUI without screensharing.

A meme is a great way to avoid their fury; Lynx doesn't show images.

GUIs are an awesome tool. Humans as a species have 5 senses, and instead of limiting computers to the narrow portion of sight needed for typing, they make full use of both our visual and aural senses.

That being said, they add another layer of abstraction away from the hardware on top of the already very abstract userspace utilities that abstract away the kernel that abstracts away the machine code that abstracts away the hardware.

All of which is to say that "Just Works" is shorthand for "I don't want to actually learn how this complex tool that I'm using works, I just want it to do everything I think it should be able to based on my lack of understanding, and do so in the way that makes sense to my ignorance. And I want it to do all that without learning why we do some steps (and then I'm going to complain about how little sense it all makes)."

That mentality is what allows predatory software companies to not only take advantage of their customers—by hiding shady practices outside of the GUI, and drawing attention to and manufacturing outrage about inconsequential "features" (like ads on the start menu)—but also exist in the first place. Pushing back against that "I shouldn't have to learn the tool to use it" mentality is one of the ways we keep scam artists and spyware dealers out of Linux spaces.

"The new Windows Terminal is so slick! And PowerShell is soooo awesome! When will Linux get cool neat powerful stuff like this?"

"Uh... About three decades ago?"

(To be honest, PowerShell is neat. But it's also cross platform, so if I really want it on Linux I guess I can get it there too? I don't really need to, I'm in middle of rewriting some PowerShell stuff in Python)

Most of the people I've introduced to Linux don't even use the shell. Beginner-friendly Linux distros are perfectly usable without ever touching a terminal, just as most people use Windows without ever touching PowerShell (or worse, the Registry Editor).

I'm on Mint, but I still use the terminal to update my flatpaks. I'm just freaky that way 😎

When are you REQUIRED to use cli? The app store works well, many apps have installers, and will be perfect for average users.

Advanced users should already be familiar with CLI and just need to learn a little more.