A screenshot from Back To The Future. Doc has Marty and his girlfriend in the car, and is saying “GUI? Where we’re going, we don’t need GUI!”
Hard disagree.
GUIs made computers/operating systems accessible. In fact, I would argue that we need even less command line in Linux distributions for the most common tasks and even those beyond that. The hardcore Linux fan won’t agree, I guess, but IMO that’s one of the ongoing needs in Linux accessibility and wider acceptance.
Good example is YasT in OpenSuse. A GUI for much of the stuff other distributions require knowledge of terminal commands, though it really is for Sys. Admins.
Mint and its big daddy Ubuntu have done well for the average user. I hope that this trend will continue and companies will support Linux better than they are now.
We did get normies on Linux. 70% of people use an Android phone. That’s Linux.
Linux can be dead easy to use, and normies can get used to it. It’s just a matter of the technology and the brand, both of which Valve seems to be working on lately. Linux is happening.
Android uses the linux kernel. It has little to do with what we actually mean when we say linux IMHO
Android got people on Linux the same way routers got people on BSD.
And besides the mobile environment should definitely NOT be used as an example for the desktop space. It’s a disgusting mess of strict vendor controls and proprietary crap trying to put heavy limits on what the user can or cannot do with their hardware. Absolutely don’t want that for my PC. I already have a sneaking suspicion that that’s where we’re headed with ARM on desktop, which is a scary thought.
And how much command line does the average user use while operating their android phone?
Every few years I buy a new computer and then install a fresh copy of whatever UI friendly distro that the community is gushing over. Each time has seen significant improvements but each time I’m spending my time in the terminal.
I’m not even a normie. I run Synology with docker containers. I operate my own website. I just don’t wanna be in the terminal just to play my PC games.
I think the problem is that it’s just easier to explain what to do for someone having a problem by telling them to paste a line of text into the terminal. Having to walk a user through gui navigation is a pain.
That means, though, that anyone getting help to get gud at Linux is going to mostly be leaning terminal commands.
Quite the opposite. Walking people through terminal commands is a pain. Cryptic commands that often obscure their true meaning and functionality, where every typo leads to failure.
On the other hand, asking someone to open “Software” and just click on the “Install” button of whatever they searched for is infinitely better than explaining how to update the package index, add a repo and so forth.
And that’s just installing software.
New kernel? The average user shouldn’t know about that. Just install it with an OS upgrade. File editing? Stop opening explanations with “sudo nano…”, start with “open your favourite text editor”. Or better: " click on settings and activate option xyz." And so forth.
I use the terminal myself. Sometimes because I want to. Often because I have to. I wish I had the option more often.
But the opposite is true when you’re by yourself. If you’re staring at the terminal, literally infinite commands are possible. If you’ve got a GUI, the designers had to spend a little time thinking about what all the operations in the program were, and how to organize and access them. You, the user, then get to navigate this mini-help-guide that is the GUI in order to figure out what you need to do. Yes, it’s more work for the programmer, but that’s the entire point of programming. Do a little more work up front in order to save yourself and others a lot of work down the road.
Drag agrees with you. Drag just had a funny conversation recently about a particular Linux tool that had a desktop version and a CLI version, and drag was asked which drag wanted. Drag would personally prefer to use it on the CLI, though drag is glad the GUI exists. And then this meme popped into drag’s head.
No, GUI is actually great and opened up computers to billions more people.
Imagine if the terminal in the 80s has had a line with auto-completion below the prompt.
Or a clipboard with notepad in a second window for quick reference. The amount of one-off commands and single use script kiddie code I had transcribed in my marble composition notebook was staggering.
Right. I’m saying how great it would’ve been to have those things when all we had was CLI, just like your point about autocomplete. Especially for dummies like me who didn’t ask for help or look for resources and had to reverse engineer directory changes and command strings to learn the interface.
So do you pronounce it ‘gooey’ or ‘jewey’?
Ask the weirdos that pronounce it “jif” and watch their heads explode. They both start with “graphical”.
unpopular opinion: notepad is easier to use than vi
Not if notepad isn’t installed.
Edit: Relatedly, I took the time to learn vi because it’s usually installed already.
Nano is easier for beginners. Nano is similar to a curses version of notepad. Nano is also not installed and the server admins of the server you’re shelling into may not be pleased with you installing it.
I’ve been using Linux since around 1998. Back then it was fair to say that the command line was occasionally needed. I personally prefer the command line because it is much more powerful, and I can do so much more with it. Shockingly, I do not use Arch. (I’m on Gentoo.)
But, I also maintain an Xubuntu computer for my wife. I haven’t needed the command line for it ever that I can recall. I log in occasionally and it pops up a GUI prompt for me to install updates. GUI updater comes up, and a GUI sudo dialog elevates my permissions. Everything is updated through GUI. Everything my wife needs to do (including occasionally adding or updating a wifi connection) is done through the GUI.
(Don’t get me started on their stupid mix of snaps and debs, though. That is a huge pet peeve.)
Re: command line - have you ever seen a person try to move a bunch of 1 type of file from one dir to another in MS Windows Explorer file manager? Best case scenario, they know to ctrl-click to select several non-sequential files. Worst case, they drag and drop each file individually. In the command line, just do ‘cp *jpg …/destination-dir/’.
