this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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The main problem still is that for some configuration you still need to use the CLI, the average user does not want to touch that no matter how powerful it is, they want a fully functional GUI that lets you so exactly the same thing but by clicking on buttons. Pair that with drivers that either do not exist or will not work for (some) of your hardware, odd crashed like the Bluetooth stack crapping out and not working anymore until you restart the system, or the system that hangs from hibernation with a black screen. So unless those hurdles are tackled the Linux adoption rate will stay low because the average user wants a system that works, and not one they have to debug.
I've been on and off different distros of Linux since Ubuntu 6 using Pop_OS! as my daily driver for work a few years now, and the same problems I had then are still here today which is a shame honestly.
At this point this is just misinformation... you can easily live and configure everything an "average user" would via GUI in Ubuntu (and most of it's derivatives) or anything running KDE Plasma as a desktop
The reason must of us still CHOOSE to use CLI is because it's powerful but unless you are crazy as I am and running Hyprland as a daily driver, you really do not need CLI...
PS: I fucking love Hyprland! hehehehe
The average user wants their problem gone. And will use whatever helps. Windows users were editing register and editing ini files since Windows was an addon to DOS, and continue doing it. For a literate person there is absolutely nothing more inheritly more intuitive or easy in clicking a checkbox in a fifth submenu than entering a command in a console. Stop perpetuating this weird myth.
This is correct. I work with the "average user" of technology daily as IT support, and honestly, they don't give any shits at all about why it's messed up, or what needs to be done to correct the problem. Box broken, make fix.
The argument that I think the poster is trying to make is that, if a user needs to do any self troubleshooting, which is basically inevitable with technology at the moment, having to use a CLI to get things done is undesirable for the average person. They barely want to bother opening control panel in Windows (or the new "settings" app.... Ugh.) nevermind understand any of it.
Box broken. Make fix.
It's not a weird myth, have you ever worked with average users? Some of them have trouble opening a PDF or don't know how to import a CVS file in Excel. Power users have always been tinkering in their OS that's nothing new, but I'm talking about the average Joe.
People you described don't have better or worse time with different types of user interfaces, it's all incomprehensible to them. Average Joe with zero skills can't check boxes in some weird menus, just as they can't write text in a weird black box. We're talking about people who are at least a little curious about their OS.
I don’t know if I agree with entirely. A good UI lets you configure your system without knowing much about it. E.g. if you want to change Ubuntu’s Wi-Fi power save setting you edit a hidden text file (I don’t remember where it is off of the top of my head.) I didn’t even know that this file existed without a helpful AskUbuntu thread and that editing it would greatly speed up my connection. If a UI option existed, I would probably have found it while poking around the network settings screen.
That’s what a good UI does: it lets you mess with your system without need for a help forum or leafing through documentation. You can look at where settings are supposed to be, find what you’re looking for, and even explore new settings that you don’t know about.
Oh hey, let's run an experiment then. I'm not a Windows poweruser, but I have an access to it. Let's see, in almost real time, how long it will take me to find how to change Wi-Fi power save setting (I don't know what it is, so very fair this way).
Well, it's a setting, so let's go where settings are. I go to a big menu, find settings in it, assume wifi is in network settings, go there, find wifi setting. Read through all the menus. Nothing. I'm 5 menus deep, and there is "more adapter options button". It asks an admin password, so let's give it to it. Completely different window opens, one that I saw all those years ago in Windows XP. It's called wifi 3 properties. It doesn't render properly on my monitor, the text is blurry, but we're not in "googling shit" territory yet so I power through. (later I found out that it's normal, this menu was constructed when 640x480 was considered high def resolution, and it struggles with modern screens). In this menu there is 12 rows of something, I don't know what QoS Packet Scheduler means or what Client For Windows does. Let's press configure on this one. That menu closes, it asks ominous question, and new one opens. It assures me that the device is working properly, and in advanced tab there is 24 different settings I can change. Settings like "Fat Channel Intollerant" (It is disabled. I don't know if it's good or bad), or Human Presence Detection (it's auto. I assume it's something related to the upcoming robot uprising). There is no help, there is no explanation, I lost count how deep I am, it's more than 10. I'm like half an hour in, probably. I checked all the available settings. I forgot what I'm looking for and had to re-read your comment to remind myself. But at least I don't have to edit a text file, amirite?
Ok, fuck it, let's google. First link.
I cry for a minute, click the link, the list isn't there. I still don't know what to click, and the link is about Intel. Is my wifi adapter made by intel? Do I need to know it? Let's google further.
Stack overflow.
Click yours. So I do need to know it. OK, let's do that. I should've guessed that you don't find setting in settings, it's intuitive after all.
It looks like one of the menus that I saw already, but it's not, it's different one. It once again assures me that the device is working properly. There is no settings. There is no Power Management Tab. Let's google that then.
Mycrosoft forums.
Well, the answer is 4 years old. My drivers are up to date, so that doesn't help. Let's dig further. Another post on the Microsoft forums.
Damn, I am sure glad I don't have to edit any text files, that would be unintuitive as fuck. Anyway, let's open regedit and create some new DWORDs, shall we? That would not be a problem, regedit is easy and intuitive program that allows very easy way to intuitively do anything.
Anyway, it didn't help. Turns out it stopped helping at some point. Further in the Microsoft forums people offering helping powershell scripts that I need to run in Elevated Powershell to do...something, I assume? It changes some register keys, it's not obvious what.
At this point, I give up. I am easily hour in, I don't know how to change wifi power safe setting in Windows, and I am afraid I will never know. Sure glad I didn't have to edit one symbol in a text file the name of which is easily googlable.
You have so thoroughly captured the Windows experience. Bravo!
Well the comparison I'd draw is not even needing to worry about that kind of thing on Windows. I went from getting about 200 to 300 Mbps on Windows without doing anything besides connecting to a network to getting 10 to 30 Mbps on Pop!_OS and Linux Mint (Before fixing this issue.)
The strength of Windows is not easy access to more settings (especially after they split the setting between the new settings app and the old control panel), it's not needing to access most of them in the first place. That will vary between users and use cases of course. Some people moved to Linux well before the enshittificafion of Windows got really bad because it suits their needs better.
Well, that's moving the goalpost, isn't it? We started with "Linux bad because reading hard" and "Windows good because mouse click boxes easy" and now we're in "windows is just works, no need to change anything".
Well guess what, this is also not true, you do constantly need to fiddle with Windows, it's just sometimes you can't edit what you need, and you're out of luck.
Next time, try OpenSuse
No terminal required.
It's not a myth though. How do you know what to type in a CLI? You either google it or you read the man pages and god help you if you have to do that because they are not noob accessible documents. What do you do in a GUi? You either google it or you read plain words that are low in technical information on the screen in the menu labeled after what you want to change. GUIs exist for a reason. They brought in the masses for a reason. Pretending that they aren't easier is a demonstrably wrong position.
What is that reason? To obfuscate what is really happening? To make it difficult to support a computer because it takes 20 pages of pictures and a flow chart to explain something when a person could just copy paste a single line? I don't buy that gui's are easier or intuitive, or all that useful every time.
I don't see any difference ~~googling~~ using a decent search engine for one over the other.
And lets not forget that windows is a confusing mess of self help support pages and command line entries for almost everything that goes wrong.
Windows: "PROGRAM_NAME experienced an error: DEEZ_NUTZ"
Yep that's what we're calling a useful error prompt these days. So much better than Linux lol
"I'm sowwy, something went wrong :(". No logs, no error message, no nothing.
God I hate it so much.
The same way you know where the setting you're after located. As my little experiment showed it's not obvious if your problem isn't trivial. And if it's trivial, you can be sure it's trivial on every modern OS.
If you spend a fraction of time you spent learning your GUI on learning the set of commands you have, it will be very easy for you. There is autocomplete and there are various helps, and there are conventions a lot of the software follows. If you're literate, it's fine.
It's funny you listing out that experiment, because that's more akin to the bullshit I run into with Linux when I need to fix some weird ass quirk. Tons if incorrect or outdated information, and forum assholes calling people idiots for not knowing and refusing to help or being autistically pedantic because you misspelled something. Support on either platform is a garbage experience. I haven't denied that at all.
It's a curse of the tech world. There are always some bullshit problems, there is always the need for tuning, tinkering, and generally fucking around with your system. No matter the OS, you will encounter some non-trivial problem at some point, that's just the price of complexity. At least Linux is made for that and is opensource.
Yeah, that sums up my experience quite well.
I'd argue that as Windows continues to abandon its (relatively) sane configuration UI for the newer useless Settings screens, it has reached the point where it really is sometimes easier to just look up what you need to do in Powershell.
This problem is only getting worse over time, so I don't think it's fair to hand the win to Windows.