Careful, he’s a hero

I’d take it a step further that by “by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts”, they’re really meaning “it’s for the elites”. They like that it’s hard, they had to work to learn it and they’ll be damned if anyone should get it easier, and also it’s a way to flex on people.

I may be overstating this person’s take on it and reading more into it than is there, but that’s my general view of this enthusiast (elitist) mindset, and really, it isn’t doing anyone any favors.

You’re going to always have a negative view of people that disagree with you if you simply create an strawman position and declare it as their beliefs rather than listening to what they’re saying.

I’ve never been against GUIs, as I’ve said in my previous comments. But, like the user I was replying to, treating terminal use like a failure of UI design instead of the core reason that Linux was developed is just ignorant of the history of the operating system.

If some people want to make a fully graphical UI for the everyman, that’s perfectly fine but that is only one small use case for Linux and since, as of today, such a UI doesn’t exist then everyone using Linux will need to learn to use the terminal because some tasks will require it. That’s the reality of Linux today.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing that there are some tasks that can be done in a GUI.

I don’t believe that any Linux DE is at the point where a regular user never needs to use the terminal. Knowing how to use the terminal is, currently, a required skill for using Linux.

Now, don’t take this to mean that I think someone’s grandmother needs to be a terminal user. By “regular user” I mean “average person who has chosen to use Linux” and not “random person off the streets”, that person should probably use Windows still because Linux isn’t ready for everyone.

The average user of a computer does not want to even think about the operating system it uses.

That is certainly true.

Not everyone needs to be technical, and shouldn’t have to be to use a computer and reap the full benefits of using one. I choose to be because I’m a fucking spaz, but that doesn’t mean someone who doesn’t want to be should instead be condemned to inferior offerings from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. If Linux were, indeed, the best – as Microsoft seems determined to prove via Windows enshittification – then it should be, ideally, just as easy for nontechnical people to pick up as Windows. If it isn’t, that’s a problem with Linux that is yet to be solved, not a problem with people. […] I say all this in the hope you’ll understand, if you want Linux to take off, it needs to be accessible to the average idiot.

You seem to be misinterpreting what I am saying.

I am not here as a Linux evangelical, trying to spread the Source Code Word of Linus. It’s admirable that you want that, you should contribute to the many open source projects that are bringing that closer to reality.

I’m here as a user of Linux trying to read Linux memes in c/linuxmemes and so I focus my attention on the present state of being a user in Linux, not some hypothetical reality that, though desirable, doesn’t yet exist.

In the current state of things, Linux is not for everyone. It is a good operating system, but not everyone has the time to use it. I will certainly tell people of the advantages that it has over Windows and, for those capable, I will recommend it.

For the people that choose to use Linux today, the 1st of April in the Year of our Lord 2025: you will have to use the Terminal. It isn’t optional. Nor, despite the griping of newbies, is it a difficult thing to learn and you should become comfortable with it if you want to be a successful user of Linux. Artificially limiting yourself to GUI applications is going to make the operating system seem less capable than it actually is and you will be frustrated by a much larger set of problems.

Until that glorious day in The Future when the universal GUI DE comes out, learn to use the terminal.

We’re not talking about most users, Linux isn’t for everyone.

Every time this argument comes up people always point at someone like their grandmother and her inability to learn the terminal as if that is the target audience for Linux. It isn’t, Linux isn’t for everyone. It’s an operating system built by and for enthusiasts.

There has been a lot of improvements to Linux so that ‘enthusiasts’ need to do less work but even the most user friendly distro requires you to use the terminal for some tasks.

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.

I don’t compile, I flip the CPU instruction switches manually while reading directly from the source code.

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.

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.

I’ve gotten to the point where I just assume that the game will work with proton. I’ll check protondb if it’s an expensive game but other than that I just pretend I’m using Windows.

A source of entertainment in the Linux kernel mailing list

Just like grandma supernova used to make

OP didn’t update their repost bot to understand what it’s reposting.

I really hate that, on Linux, my login screen is just a prompt for my password. I don’t feel the same value that I do on Windows where I get a new background every few minutes and 4 links to websites where I can buy trips to the location in the picture.

Logging in is similarly tedious. When I login to Linux I just see my desktop, BORING. Where’s the “Happening Now” News pop-up in the system tray notification area.

Also, why does my Linux search only show me applications on my computer. When I search for Steam, I also want to see the top 5 search results for Steam on Bing just in case I don’t remember what Steam is.

very well optimized electron app

It’s like a very light Elephant

Recording @q

The CLI is first because Linux is, first and foremost, an operating system built for terminal access. It was based on Unix, a mainframe operating system that served terminals.

I’ve heard that KDE and GNOME, however, are both at a level now where P&CIs are all you really need. I have not tried them myself, though.

Between all of my devices at home and work, I use KDE, XFCE and hyprland.

KDE has a pretty comprehensive GUI, but to say that they’re all you need is a gross exaggeration. Sure, you can connect your bluetooth device via the GUI but if there is any problem with it the GUI is woefully insufficient for troubleshooting. Similarly, you can adjust the volume in the GUI… but if your device is using the wrong bitrate or you want to do anything more complicated than control the device that sound is sent to, then you’re going to be editing dot files and using the terminal.

In Linux, the GUI applications are a convenience but the core of the system is the terminal interface. That’s what everything has been designed for since the beginning. Graphical Desktop environments are not, at all, a replacement for the terminal.

Your stance also de-emphasizes the difficulty of learning CLI for the first time. It’s not the most difficult thing ever, but it can be fairly frustrating. It’s not something you want to deal with when just trying to unwind after work on your PC, or while you’re trying to do your job at work. I think it’s pretty reasonable most people don’t want to have to learn yet another paradigm just to do what they’ve already figured out how to with a P&CI.

I don’t think that it is reasonable to want to swap operating systems without learning the new operating system.

If a person has decided that they never want to use anything but a mouse to solve their problems then Linux is not the OS for them. Learning a new operating system means learning how the operating system works, not declaring how you think it should work and declaring anything outside of your expectations as unreasonable.

If you’re coming into this with the idea that you’re going to swap to Linux but only use your Windows/Mac knowledge to puzzle through a GUI and also refuse to touch anything that is in the terminal then you should not use Linux. If you’re asking for help and then telling the people trying to help you that you’re not going to use the terminal, you’re going to face a lot of negative responses.

You gotta do it like this:

I do understand their perspective.

It’s just that their expectations do not align with reality and they’re only going to hurt their experience by thinking that there is a path to using Linux without using the terminal. Some distros do a really good job of creating something that seems like a pure GUI experience, but that illusion only lasts right up until there is a problem that the UI designers didn’t anticipate and the only way forward is to type terminal commands.

I’m not trying to be an asshole when I say this kind of thing.

It’s just disingenuous for people to recommend Linux and also say ‘Don’t worry, you won’t need the terminal’ or to foster the illusion, in new users, that their fear of the terminal is justified. I get that, of all things Linux, the most alien thing from a Windows/Smartphone user’s perspective, is a text-based interface.

It seems difficult and social media is full of people acting like the terminal is incredibly difficult to learn so people believe that they can simply opt out of using the terminal. You can’t, and trying to do so is going to make users have a horrible experience. It’d be like telling people that Windows doesn’t require a mouse, that’s possibly true but if a person artificially limits themselves in that way, they’re going to have a much harder time than they would have if they’d spend the time to use the OS properly.

My brain knows, but my fingers get lost along the way.