Archive.

You’ve heard the “prophecy”: next year is going to be the year of the Linux desktop, right? Linux is no longer the niche hobby of bearded sysadmins and free software evangelists that it was a decade ago! Modern distributions like Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Linux Mint are sleek, accessible, and — dare I say it — mainstream-adjacent.

Linux is ready for professional work, including video editing, and it even manages to maintain a slight market share advantage over macOS among gamers, according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey.

However, it’s not ready to dethrone Windows. At least, not yet!

  • 3abas@lemm.eeEnglish
    11·
    4 days ago

    That assumes the programmer bothered to make user friendly flags… The terminal doesn’t magically just work.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
      31·
      4 days ago

      With open source, the delineation between “user” and “programmer” is arbitrary and capricious. The GUI-centric Windows approach reinforces that artificial distinction; the terminal breaches that barrier.

      • 3abas@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        Are you suggesting users with no programming experience can simply add the flags they need to a terminal application but would be unable to do the same with a GUI because the GUI is the barrier? Not the logic and that the program will do with the flag, but the GUI is the barrier?

        What are you saying?

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
          1·
          6 hours ago

          Are you suggesting users with no programming experience can simply add the flags they need to a terminal application but would be unable to do the same with a GUI because the GUI is the barrier?

          Yeah, why not? I’ll go ahead and make that suggestion.

          I mean, the terminal allows them to ctrl-c, ctrl-v a simple solution developed by someone else, even if that someone else didn’t bother to build out a GUI for applying their changes.

          The convoluted steps they would have to take to achieve the same effect with a GUI would seriously hinder the GUI-only user.

          What I am really saying, though, is that the problem of “needing to use the terminal” is not actually solved by ensuring that every possible setting can be accessed and manipulated with a mouse.

          I’m saying that the best way to solve this “problem” is by pushing the user to expect and even demand the terminal. Distros should autolaunch a terminal window at startup. Put it right out there, front and center. Invite the novice user to interact with it with friendly little toys like fortune, cowsay, sl, toilet, espeak. The insane usefulness of the various shell tools are more than enough to keep them using it.