this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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It's not that it's unintuitive at all if you pick a simple distro, it's just slightly different from Windows which has been shoved in your face throughout your entire education and career.
Yes there is some small amount of learning involved, but there are many Linux distros nowadays that are setup for ease of use and require no CLI knowledge or use from the user. There are many desktop environments that mimic Windows versions to make the switch pretty seamless, too.
If you first tried Linux many years ago, I could understand you saying that it's unintuitive, but nowadays that just isn't the case.
I'd like to add that you should just pick the OS you prefer. I'm not one of those needs that look down on anyone who chooses to use Windows over Linux. I personally have both on my machine because games. I just wanted to clarify that it isn't unintuitive at all, just different than what you were forced to learn in school.
No. It is not "slightly different". In my 30 years of using Windows I have never used the CLI, which you have to use on a regular basis on Linux to complete basic tasks. I detailed this example elsewhere. There's absolutely nothing intuitive about the CLI.
You don't have to really use the CLI on the simpler Linux distros nowadays is what I am getting at. Mint and Ubuntu for instance. My grandparents use Mint, and believe me, they don't know what the terminal is.
Also, windows installers run Command Prompt stuff in the background. You are basically doing the same process but clicking buttons to setup a CLI command. They are more similar than you think.
You are just used to the GUI way of doing things, and you can get by fine on Linux nowadays. If you were forced to learn Linux growing up, you would think Windows was the unintuitive OS.
I'm not trying to convince you one is better than the other, just telling you that it is not unintuitive.
Yes. You do.
How do you not realize how clicking a bunch of sensibly-labeled buttons is one thousand times easier and more intuitive than memorizing a library of commands and when and how to use them?
And I'm just telling you that you're wrong.
No you don't have to use the CLI on Linux at all You are just wrong about that. Modern Mint and Ubuntu come with completely GUI driven package managers for installing and updating. It hasn't always been like this but it is now.
The only reason you would have to use the CLI is if you are doing some power user stuff that you would have to do on CLI or powershell in windows, as well.
You do realize this is just your opinion and not a fact. Your opinion is that is unintuitive. My opinion is that it is not, its literally impossible to be wrong here. I can find tons of people who think Windows way of doing things is more unintuitive. The only fact here is that neither of them actually are unintuitive in reality. People just have preferences and biases because of what they are used to.
You sound awfully close minded and angry for some reason too.
Okay and...what about the cornucopia of software that is not available in those repositories?
No it's not. You're just wrong about that and I don't understand why you feel the need to lie about it. Any kind of diagnostics or troubleshooting you try to find support for Linux will be almost guaranteed to send you into the CLI.
I am not closed-minded but I am angry because people throw around "it's easy" all the time with zero concept of what a typical person is capable of. So idiots like me dive into it and spend hours and hours trying to make it work until we just give up and then have to go back and undo all of it just to get shit working again, which is just a giant fucking waste of time.
Sort by approximate number of pre-compiled packages. AppImage etc. are on top of that.
You have to hunt for software on windows way more than on Linux. And it also doesn't always have a CLI installer: Say you want to control a Huawei E3372 not via its web interface (which sucks). Where do you go? You find a project on github, install go via chocolatey, then compile the project, then drop the exe somewhere.
Linux, at least, does not fucking de-install the graphics drivers while I'm playing a game. The level of jank on Linux is high, yes, with Windows it's incomprehensibly high.
No you don't. No one uses the Windows store. You just go to the website that makes the software and download and open the .exe
That's literally hunting for the software dude. You gotta open up a web browser, and if you don't know the webpage already you gotta search for it, find the download page on that website, get passed the likely popups and other crap and then finally select the right version of the software to download.
Package managers are 10000% better. Even Microsoft knows this, it's why they created winget.
Putting in winget search software name Copying the package name from the search result Putting in winget install pasted package name is significantly fewer steps. No Google search, no finding the download page, no popup crap, and no fake download button ads trying to get you to install malware. You just install the software in less time than it would take to even write your crappy comment.
Which is all 1000x easier and more intuitive than installing an appimage or tar.gz or whatever other 1000 Linux filetypes need to be installed using the CLI. It honestly boggles my mind that you can't understand this.
Yes I agree but we were specifically discussing software that's not found in package managers, which is a lot of it.
WTF is a winget?
If you are installing software from websites with pop-up ads and malware, that is a whole other problem not related to the OS.
Winget is the command-line package manager Microsoft made for windows 10/11 recently.
As I said: You have to hunt for software. That, precisely, there, is hunting for software. Where do you get that software from? Random .zip domains? And
.exeinstallers? People don't even manage to use, or demand,.msis.I even had to install drivers on windows. Drivers. The only hardware-related thing I dealt with manually in the last I think decade on Linux was a usb mode switch daemon... precisely for that Huawei modem I mentioned, actually. Because apparently Windows does not come with bog-standard USB network drivers those things first register as USB mass storage, offering you drivers to install, then with some magic switch to USB network mode. So the reason I need to lift a finger on Linux is because companies are hacking around Windows deficiencies by making their devices act in bonkers ways, "here, windows, autostart this, install drivers, then start this program to bit-bang the usb interface to switch modes".
Oh I also had a look into reversing the stereo channels of my headphone output because I messed up and soldered my cable backwards, before realising implementing a software bodge was a rather stupid idea especially with the soldering iron still hot.
And don't get me started on Explorer's performance -- I know it's not ntfs' fault, or even the vfs, nushell has no issues listing gigantic directory structures, recursively, in seconds. Still slower than the same operation on linux but at least it's tolerable. Explorer takes minutes to sort a single large directory by modified date. In currentyear. On an nvme.
The only reason I still have a windows install is because some people insist on using it and I can't exactly test windows builds on wine. Well, I do, but occasionally you have to try the real deal. I use Linux because it just works.
And as I said, we're discussing software not found in package managers, which is a lot of it. The only way to find it is to "hunt for it", which usually involves typing the name into a search engine and clicking the first link that pops up and then clicking the "download" button.
The difference is there is no download button for Linux, just a bunch of code you're expected to type into the CLI that doesn't work.
LOL like you don't on Linux? I mean sometimes you don't because they literally don't exist. Like pretty much any fingerprint reader or Nvidia graphics card?
I don't know what Explorer is other than a shitty SUV.
That is just the most hilariously incorrect nonsense. If it were true, no one would pay money for Windows and Microsoft would go out of business.
Do you have any specific examples in mind or are you planning on leaving that as an assertion?
AppImage. All the user-friendly distros are configured so that installing/running those is a button click.
I have never used a fingerprint reader by in case you're interested, my graphics tablet works more seamlessly under linux, both x11 and wayland, than with windows. Can't say much about NVidia Graphics cards but they do, in fact, have drivers. If you're running the likes of Ubuntu it's going to use FLOSS drivers by default (which are getting better and better) and installing the proprietary ones is a couple of clicks.
It's the fucking file manager. Have you ever used windows. Also the desktop shell, actually.
Oh my sweet summer child.
If you need examples, you've probably never used Linux. The majority of programs I use have to be installed through CLI or appimage while the same software on Mac and Windows are installed with a simple executable file or installation wizard.
You're lying again. You have to download them and then enable them to run as executable, and then everyone one of them launches with a generic image, you can't pin them to your launcher, and you can't launch them on startup, you have to launch them from within the file manager. The system does not treat them as an app at all. Just a random file.
Yeah. We just call it a fuckin file manager.
Okay so just to be clear, you believe that people pay extra money to use Windows, even though Linux is just as good, or better? This is the position you want to take?
Honestly it's hilarious that you pointed out drivers on Windows because that is a massive sore point on Linux and further solidifies your delusional nature.
What the hell are you using, then. Seriously. Especially stuff that you wouldn't have to download manually on Windows. I'm waiting. Name them.
They do? I might've had snap or flatpack in mind. I don't keep track of that stuff everything I need is actually in nixpkgs. Distro integration may differ. What are you basing your whole opinion on, here, Linux from Scratch?
No. Windows has a head start on the Desktop due to Microsoft's FUD, illegal bundle deals with computer stores, and whatnot. Schools teaching MS Office. People thinking it's the only thing -- heck many users don't even know what an OS is, they equate PC and Windows, the other thing being Mac, which is different hardware.
Okay fair points. Like I said earlier. I am not knocking your choice of windows or anything, I am just trying to add that I have had the opposite experience with noob users on Mint, especially. There is not a single application that I could think of that noob users would want to use that aren't in the included repositories to begin with. I just don't want people to be scared away from trying Linux just because they are unexperienced.
I feel like you may be a step above your average noob and can figure out how to do some advanced things on windows, but you just don't want to put in the time to relearn what you already know. That's completely fair.