They’re blindly doing it either way. I understand and want GUIs as well, but dumping commands into terminal is starting to seem easier than “go here click this, now click that”
No. First you, the helper, have to find the option in the gui. Then you have to look up every step in the path through the gui. At every step you have to find the english name for the button/menu (localization exists), and manually type it (because you can’t select and copy the text of the gui (by default at least)). Also just referring to buttons by name sometimes won’t work. It is so cumbersome.
Now you have to go figure out what they’re actually looking at and whether it’s what you said to do or not. Command line copy-paste removes any uncertainty.
If it’s “oh, you can open up [application X] and it’s easy to figure it out, and there’s videos out there to cover your use case”, then ok.
But if it’s to help a user with a very specific task and they want their hand held, well from a GUI perspective I’m either making a bunch of screenshots or maybe even a tutorial video or a screen share session… Or I shoot them a relatively short CLI command that does it and move on to other things.
It is usually much shorter to tell someone the CLI to do something than it is to try to train them on a GUI for the same thing. If it’s well-trodden subject matter, well they probably already found a youtube tutorial and didn’t even have to ask.
But then the CLI wouldn’t be faster anymore and the whole argument most people keep bringing up falls apart.
It is much faster for the one giving the answer. Also, the looking up the man page is something you only do the first time. With the gui the user should also verify before blindly following instructions, but it is usually harder to find proper documentation of gui features than cli commands.
Also those man pages aren’t even remotely written to be understandable by Linux novices most of the time…
That is a fair point. They are dense, technical and at times pretty hard to read. But when a novice asks for help they are always going to either trust blindly or verify. Verifying can be a difficult task for a novice no matter if gui or cli is suggested. I do think most novices would trust the gui way more and feel more in control of it, even if they are basically doing the same thing.
basic_task_list = ['copy and paste', 'install package', 'type', 'keyboard', 'read and write' ]
for basic_task in basic_task_list:
print(f"""
Newbies can't {basic_task}.
They never {basic_task} in windows.
Windows has replaced {basic_task} with copilot, this is what linux needs to do to compete.
How will linux ever hope to attract windows user if it still maintains this ancient hacker 1337xor tools like {basic_task}?
Users just want to turn on computer and watch it do computance - how does linux not get this?
""")
"Ok, open app commandX,
now click on the button labeled Y… It’s just there, just below your mouse cur… oh now you’ve moved your mouse… no, not there, it’s more to the left, up a bit… down a bit, it’s labeled Y. Third one from the top.
Yes, that’s the one, now click it.
ok, in this pop up you type "super secret code thing’,
no, capitalization doesn’t matter.
Yes. I’ll spell it “s u p e r {space} s e c r e t {space} c o” what do you mean, you don’t have a T on your keyboard? "
Or.
“Open up the terminal and type this code:
commandX --CodeY
This will do XYZ. After it’s done, can you tell me the error it says on the screen?”
Back in dos there was a systemic encouragement to users to at least learn something about a computer. Nowadays windows apologists seem to relish how much it dumbs down computers, (or any over supported system).
They won’t learn to ride the bike until someone removes the stabiliser brackets - and Gates is one of the cunts who figured out that he makes more cash by welding them on.
Exactly. You can tell someone to type a command, and ask for the output. Otherwise you’re spending 90% of your time asking someone to explain what they see, and searching for buttons that just move around from week to week.
You can’t copy and paste into a GUI, and it’s painful to help people to use them.
So you want newbies blindly entering scripts to there command line and not knowing what that are doing.
They’re blindly doing it either way. I understand and want GUIs as well, but dumping commands into terminal is starting to seem easier than “go here click this, now click that”
Open “app” -> open menu -> select option -> change this / push this button.
Just as easy to write as a command. But many people (me included) is so used to go the CLI route that the GUI way is only an afterthought.
No. First you, the helper, have to find the option in the gui. Then you have to look up every step in the path through the gui. At every step you have to find the english name for the button/menu (localization exists), and manually type it (because you can’t select and copy the text of the gui (by default at least)). Also just referring to buttons by name sometimes won’t work. It is so cumbersome.
Now you have to go figure out what they’re actually looking at and whether it’s what you said to do or not. Command line copy-paste removes any uncertainty.
If it’s “oh, you can open up [application X] and it’s easy to figure it out, and there’s videos out there to cover your use case”, then ok.
But if it’s to help a user with a very specific task and they want their hand held, well from a GUI perspective I’m either making a bunch of screenshots or maybe even a tutorial video or a screen share session… Or I shoot them a relatively short CLI command that does it and move on to other things.
It is usually much shorter to tell someone the CLI to do something than it is to try to train them on a GUI for the same thing. If it’s well-trodden subject matter, well they probably already found a youtube tutorial and didn’t even have to ask.
And where a typo can cause a catastrophic outcome
Teach them to double check against the man page before pasting, would be my guess.
But then the CLI wouldn’t be faster anymore and the whole argument most people keep bringing up falls apart.
Also those man pages aren’t even remotely written to be understandable by Linux novices most of the time…
It is much faster for the one giving the answer. Also, the looking up the man page is something you only do the first time. With the gui the user should also verify before blindly following instructions, but it is usually harder to find proper documentation of gui features than cli commands.
That is a fair point. They are dense, technical and at times pretty hard to read. But when a novice asks for help they are always going to either trust blindly or verify. Verifying can be a difficult task for a novice no matter if gui or cli is suggested. I do think most novices would trust the gui way more and feel more in control of it, even if they are basically doing the same thing.
their* they/those*
Ideally piping directly from curl to bash, yes
/sOr pipe GUI output into another GUI function.
Or
>> log.txtbasic_task_list = ['copy and paste', 'install package', 'type', 'keyboard', 'read and write' ] for basic_task in basic_task_list: print(f""" Newbies can't {basic_task}. They never {basic_task} in windows. Windows has replaced {basic_task} with copilot, this is what linux needs to do to compete. How will linux ever hope to attract windows user if it still maintains this ancient hacker 1337xor tools like {basic_task}? Users just want to turn on computer and watch it do computance - how does linux not get this? """)What’s easier to support?
"Ok, open app commandX,
now click on the button labeled Y… It’s just there, just below your mouse cur… oh now you’ve moved your mouse… no, not there, it’s more to the left, up a bit… down a bit, it’s labeled Y. Third one from the top.
Yes, that’s the one, now click it.
ok, in this pop up you type "super secret code thing’,
no, capitalization doesn’t matter.
Yes. I’ll spell it “s u p e r {space} s e c r e t {space} c o” what do you mean, you don’t have a T on your keyboard? "
Or. “Open up the terminal and type this code: commandX --CodeY This will do XYZ. After it’s done, can you tell me the error it says on the screen?”
But yes, I agree, the GUI looks nicer.
I dgaf about support. (i’m naturally perky).
Back in dos there was a systemic encouragement to users to at least learn something about a computer. Nowadays windows apologists seem to relish how much it dumbs down computers, (or any over supported system).
They won’t learn to ride the bike until someone removes the stabiliser brackets - and Gates is one of the cunts who figured out that he makes more cash by welding them on.
Exactly. You can tell someone to type a command, and ask for the output. Otherwise you’re spending 90% of your time asking someone to explain what they see, and searching for buttons that just move around from week to week.
Yep, this is just one factor. It’s difficult for people not to judge a book by its cover.
Correctly done, cli is superior for a lot of things.