this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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    They'll cast you back to the Windows realm with all their toxic might (discuss.tchncs.de)
    submitted 3 days ago by Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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    [–] fell@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 2 days ago (44 children)

    A true mainstream Linux distro would need guidelines like this:

    • The user is never be expected to type a command into a terminal.
    • The user is never be expected to edit a configuration file.
    • There is a graphical UI for every possible action the user might want to (or have to) do.

    This especially includes:

    • Configuring audio devices
    • Installing graphics drivers
    • Updating the operating system
    • Managing applications and storage space
    • Connecting to networked storage
    • Adjusting kernel parameters (This is neccessary on certain hardware, yet, barely any distro has a graphical UI for it.)

    The only distro that comes close to this is Linux Mint, but not even Mint covers everything I just mentioned.

    If we want Linux to succeed, there needs to be at least one distro that confidently ships without a terminal.

    [–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (23 children)

    The user is never be expected to type a command into a terminal.

    Nope! Absolutely not. This is where Windows 95 fucked us all over. Prior to 95, windows was an application executed from a DOS prompt. Users may not have known many commands, but they learned that commands could be given.

    Windows 95 tried to convince us that a GUI developer knew better than the user everything the user wanted to be able to do with that computer. It did make simple use easier, but the way it did it was by hiding the average user away from any simple ability to automate. It took away virtually all command line utilities that could be scripted to run themselves, and replaced them with GUI-driven applications that required the human's time and attention, repeatedly and monotonously sorting through graphical menus and prompts to achieve a task that the computer could easily be "trained" to do itself. It did it by dumbing down the user, reducing their expectations to the few idea the GUI allowed them to express.

    GUIs are Fisher-Price toys. They are the bright and shiny, but functionally crippled. There is no need for a distro that deliberately impairs the user in the way that you describe.

    [–] aquablack@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

    I understand where you're coming from, but this may simply be a difference in goals.

    If your goal is that people become more computer-literate, then yes, perhaps we should use the GUI less. People who are already Linux users aren't going to have that big of an issue using apt instead of a GUI software manager.

    If your goal is that more people use Linux, then you need to have GUI support. If anything else, it eases them in so that they're not drinking from the firehose all at once.

    My litmus test would be "could I feasibly teach my grandparents how to use this?" Which I think is true of Linux Mint (yes, you need terminal for good driver management, but it's not like my grandparents do that via Windows GUI)

    Also, I'm not really aware of any Linux distros that remove command line utilities - mostly, they just have the same thing in both GUI and commands

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