The biggest issue with Linux is the culture. I get that longtime users get and understand how to use it. They understand the commands. They know what -r and -n do.
I still look at my microwave daily to remember what the buttons do. There’s only 6 buttons and a dial. Although, 7 buttons. I just remembered the dial is also a button. It’s the start button.
Point is, I’m not going to learn terminal. I’m going to point the thing. Then I’m going to drag the thing. And I’m going to double click the thing.
I’ve attempted to learn terminal since 2014. I have a 0% success rate doing anything. Even copy/pasting other peoples commands. I always get an error, and I don’t understand the error. So I google the error, and then I don’t understand the explaination.
The way I have always explained it is, the OS is like a car. And terminal is how mechanics diagnose and fix the car. I tried changing my oil once, and blew up the car.
If you haven’t checked it out here, the culture is actually super helpful.
Also, look up the “man” command. Everything you need to know about every command is already built into your OS, you just have to access the “man file” for it.
I’ve been on Mint for like two years and have not opened the terminal yet. You do not have to be a developer or even a power user to run Linux. It’s just another operating system.
Like at all? You don’t ever need a command to install/update drivers, repos, packages, software in general, change settings deep in the OS, fix hardware issues, read logs, create accounts, …
Because all those things you can do with a GUI in Windows. Even the registry is just a folder structure.
You are asking for things most people don’t know how to handle on windows let alone Linux
install/update drivers/package/apps etc. Yes the discover app runs updates for every on the system
Change settings deep in the os: Yes, kde has an extensive settings app, kde monitor show you all the logs, kde settings allows you to create more user accounts.
Because Bazzite is an atomic distro changing things in the Linux version of the Windows registry is not possible, (unless you’re a developer this is a good thing).
I can’t tell you what -r and -n do, because those are option flags. They mean different things depending on the command you’re running.
Imagine you’re going to zip a file. That is, put a file in a compressed archive. You’ll probably right click on the file, on the menu that pops up you’ll click Compress…, and then WinZip pops up with text boxes to type in the name of the zip file, it probably defaults to name_of_file_you_right_clicked.zip but you can change it, maybe some check boxes for different options like if you want to password protect the archive, etc.
In a command line interface, the first thing you type is the command you’re going to run, then usually flags (which are like check boxes) or options (which are like text fields or dropdowns, you need to type in additional information after options) and then the name of an input file, and then the name of an output file. The terminal has a built-in manual, you can read about a particular command’s options by typing man [command]
Don’t know what command you need? The apropos command will search the manual for keywords. Say you want to use the command line to convert some image files from one format to another, but don’t know what command can do that. If you type apropos -aimage format convert it will search the entire manual for entries, and this will probably return the commands convert, magick, and magick-script among others. Those are commands from the ImageMagick suite. Note the -a. In this case, it stands for and, it will cause apropos to only return commands whose descriptions match all of the keywords you type in. If you don’t put that -a, and only type apropos image format convert you’ll get a much longer list of commands that include at least one of those keywords. Apropos, of course, has a manual page, which you can read with the command man apropos.
Let me really bake your noodle now: The terminal is a programming environment. Bash is a programming language. You can create variables, use if, for and while statements, do arithmetic, etc. You can use a text editor to save your programs as files, traditionally with a .sh extension, to run them later. This lets you automate…basically anything. Moving files around, converting files from one format to another, using programs like ImageMagick, ffmpeg, or several others to edit photos, videos audio clips, whatever. For publishing pictures to my blog, I’ve got a script that takes a photo, reduces it in size by half, adds a watermark, and saves the result to a special folder. And by using a .desktop file, I added that script to the right click menu, so it’s an option like Open, Open With… etc. So I run that script from the GUI.
There’s a reason most Linux distros come with an easy way to get to the terminal, usually a launcher on the panel or desktop. It’s because it is a powerful end-user tool.
Because of all your explanation, Terminal should never, ever be touch by the average user. The historical reliance on terminal is the reason that Linux adoption rates have been low.
Linux is a far better system to use for most home users that windows or Mac but terminal is beyond the capabilities of 97% of people.
I have a 11 year old low-end laptop running Mint. All I did was max out the RAM and pop in a SATA SSD. It’s stable, easy to use, and fast… until I have to hit terminal. Then it’s hours of looking up commands online, trying to figure out how to get something done that should have an easy GUI. I’m not a programmer by any means. I’m just cheap and don’t feel like tossing out perfectly functional hardware. So I push through it until I get it working.
Yes most of the 3% of people that use the Linux can mostly use terminal easily. For the 97% of people who are not using Linux, terminal is way beyond their capabilities.
terminal is beyond the capabilities of 97% of people.
No the hell it isn’t and I’ll prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt: I learned how to use the Linux terminal. I absolutely do not belong to any elite top three percent of the population. Neither do the middle schoolers using Raspberry Pis to learn computer literacy and programming.
At its core, the Linux terminal (and ANY computer command line interface, to include Microsoft Powershell) is used by typing the name of the program you want to run, and the computer runs it. On your Mint computer, open the terminal and type firefox. I bet a Firefox window opens. You have now used the terminal. Let’s try adding an option to that command. Type firefox --search "kitty cat" This will open a Firefox window and perform a search for “kitty cat” in the browser’s default search engine. This is beyond the capabilities of almost all humans?
Yeah, no. That’s learned helplessness talking. Helplessness you’ve been taught by big, greedy corporations who don’t want you to own your own machinery because they make money owning it for you. Grow up, and learn how to own the tools you own like an adult.
It’s not a culture thing. You’d have the same issues in Windows if there was a problem. Plenty snarky and dismissive answers. Some people just want an appliance and that’s okay.
The biggest issue is that people end up running on poorly or non supported hardware. Buy a system from a company that designs with Linux in mind. System 76 Tuxedo etc. 90% of the issues are gone, poof. The final bit is dependence on or inability to leave a piece of software. There are options for most things on Linux. But not everything, and not always as you’re familiar with. If that’s a deal breaker, it’s a dealbreaker. And that’s too bad but understandable. No shade.
Linux is not for everyone. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. The terminal is used so much because it’s often the quickest way of doing things - instructions in WIndows are like “click on that icon, scroll down to this and choose that, then select that tab…” but with a terminal it’s like “copy and paste this into a terminal”. It’s a powerful and useful tool. There are distros like Ubuntu which try to avoid doing terminally stuff, but it’s just so useful it’s difficult not to use it.
“The biggest problem of Linux is its culture” immediately confirmed.
The terminal isn’t the quickest for everyone. It’s merely the one with the most concise input pattern
“copy and paste it into a terminal” literally means “trust me blindly” when said to anyone but Linux enthusiasts or professionals. Which can have disastruous consequences if the command is old, for the wrong system, malformed or something else.
the reason it’s difficult to bot use the terminal is due to a lack of configuration GUIs, or lack of mention that they exist. The amount of times people get told to manipulate their /etc/fstab instead of using the safe and very well accessible GUIs most DEs provide is flabbergastingly high.
The original reply was mostly correct. The problem is the culture. Too many Linux fans and devs either don’t understand or don’t give a shit about accessibility, and when criticized for that immediately build the impenetrable wall of “it’s free so eat what we give you or screw off”.
The biggest issue with Linux is the culture. I get that longtime users get and understand how to use it. They understand the commands. They know what -r and -n do.
I still look at my microwave daily to remember what the buttons do. There’s only 6 buttons and a dial. Although, 7 buttons. I just remembered the dial is also a button. It’s the start button.
Point is, I’m not going to learn terminal. I’m going to point the thing. Then I’m going to drag the thing. And I’m going to double click the thing.
I’ve attempted to learn terminal since 2014. I have a 0% success rate doing anything. Even copy/pasting other peoples commands. I always get an error, and I don’t understand the error. So I google the error, and then I don’t understand the explaination.
The way I have always explained it is, the OS is like a car. And terminal is how mechanics diagnose and fix the car. I tried changing my oil once, and blew up the car.
If you haven’t checked it out here, the culture is actually super helpful.
Also, look up the “man” command. Everything you need to know about every command is already built into your OS, you just have to access the “man file” for it.
I’ve been on Mint for like two years and have not opened the terminal yet. You do not have to be a developer or even a power user to run Linux. It’s just another operating system.
No we don’t magically know that. We know that we have to look it up in the manual to know that.
Thanks to distros like Bazzite there really isn’t a need to learn the terminal.
Like at all? You don’t ever need a command to install/update drivers, repos, packages, software in general, change settings deep in the OS, fix hardware issues, read logs, create accounts, …
Because all those things you can do with a GUI in Windows. Even the registry is just a folder structure.
TLDR Yes
You are asking for things most people don’t know how to handle on windows let alone Linux
All with a GUI
I can’t tell you what -r and -n do, because those are option flags. They mean different things depending on the command you’re running.
Imagine you’re going to zip a file. That is, put a file in a compressed archive. You’ll probably right click on the file, on the menu that pops up you’ll click Compress…, and then WinZip pops up with text boxes to type in the name of the zip file, it probably defaults to name_of_file_you_right_clicked.zip but you can change it, maybe some check boxes for different options like if you want to password protect the archive, etc.
In a command line interface, the first thing you type is the command you’re going to run, then usually flags (which are like check boxes) or options (which are like text fields or dropdowns, you need to type in additional information after options) and then the name of an input file, and then the name of an output file. The terminal has a built-in manual, you can read about a particular command’s options by typing
man [command]Don’t know what command you need? The
aproposcommand will search the manual for keywords. Say you want to use the command line to convert some image files from one format to another, but don’t know what command can do that. If you typeapropos -a image format convertit will search the entire manual for entries, and this will probably return the commands convert, magick, and magick-script among others. Those are commands from the ImageMagick suite. Note the -a. In this case, it stands for and, it will cause apropos to only return commands whose descriptions match all of the keywords you type in. If you don’t put that -a, and only typeapropos image format convertyou’ll get a much longer list of commands that include at least one of those keywords. Apropos, of course, has a manual page, which you can read with the commandman apropos.Let me really bake your noodle now: The terminal is a programming environment. Bash is a programming language. You can create variables, use if, for and while statements, do arithmetic, etc. You can use a text editor to save your programs as files, traditionally with a .sh extension, to run them later. This lets you automate…basically anything. Moving files around, converting files from one format to another, using programs like ImageMagick, ffmpeg, or several others to edit photos, videos audio clips, whatever. For publishing pictures to my blog, I’ve got a script that takes a photo, reduces it in size by half, adds a watermark, and saves the result to a special folder. And by using a .desktop file, I added that script to the right click menu, so it’s an option like Open, Open With… etc. So I run that script from the GUI.
There’s a reason most Linux distros come with an easy way to get to the terminal, usually a launcher on the panel or desktop. It’s because it is a powerful end-user tool.
Because of all your explanation, Terminal should never, ever be touch by the average user. The historical reliance on terminal is the reason that Linux adoption rates have been low.
Linux is a far better system to use for most home users that windows or Mac but terminal is beyond the capabilities of 97% of people.
I have a 11 year old low-end laptop running Mint. All I did was max out the RAM and pop in a SATA SSD. It’s stable, easy to use, and fast… until I have to hit terminal. Then it’s hours of looking up commands online, trying to figure out how to get something done that should have an easy GUI. I’m not a programmer by any means. I’m just cheap and don’t feel like tossing out perfectly functional hardware. So I push through it until I get it working.
Yes most of the 3% of people that use the Linux can mostly use terminal easily. For the 97% of people who are not using Linux, terminal is way beyond their capabilities.
No the hell it isn’t and I’ll prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt: I learned how to use the Linux terminal. I absolutely do not belong to any elite top three percent of the population. Neither do the middle schoolers using Raspberry Pis to learn computer literacy and programming.
At its core, the Linux terminal (and ANY computer command line interface, to include Microsoft Powershell) is used by typing the name of the program you want to run, and the computer runs it. On your Mint computer, open the terminal and type
firefox. I bet a Firefox window opens. You have now used the terminal. Let’s try adding an option to that command. Typefirefox --search "kitty cat"This will open a Firefox window and perform a search for “kitty cat” in the browser’s default search engine. This is beyond the capabilities of almost all humans?Yeah, no. That’s learned helplessness talking. Helplessness you’ve been taught by big, greedy corporations who don’t want you to own your own machinery because they make money owning it for you. Grow up, and learn how to own the tools you own like an adult.
Did you delete /etc? (friendly, sympathetic, Gnuification of Win jokes))
It’s not a culture thing. You’d have the same issues in Windows if there was a problem. Plenty snarky and dismissive answers. Some people just want an appliance and that’s okay.
The biggest issue is that people end up running on poorly or non supported hardware. Buy a system from a company that designs with Linux in mind. System 76 Tuxedo etc. 90% of the issues are gone, poof. The final bit is dependence on or inability to leave a piece of software. There are options for most things on Linux. But not everything, and not always as you’re familiar with. If that’s a deal breaker, it’s a dealbreaker. And that’s too bad but understandable. No shade.
Linux is not for everyone. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. The terminal is used so much because it’s often the quickest way of doing things - instructions in WIndows are like “click on that icon, scroll down to this and choose that, then select that tab…” but with a terminal it’s like “copy and paste this into a terminal”. It’s a powerful and useful tool. There are distros like Ubuntu which try to avoid doing terminally stuff, but it’s just so useful it’s difficult not to use it.
“The biggest problem of Linux is its culture” immediately confirmed.
The original reply was mostly correct. The problem is the culture. Too many Linux fans and devs either don’t understand or don’t give a shit about accessibility, and when criticized for that immediately build the impenetrable wall of “it’s free so eat what we give you or screw off”.