When I was using linux, I used linux mint. There were some things I did need terminal for, but there’s a surprising amount of things that allow you to use a simple gui.
Getting people used to linux with mint or a similar distro that allows clicky things is probably the best way to go imo.
What’s the best “I don’t want to learn anything” distro?
Linux mint I guess. As from my experience, it have almost everything needed by a regular user:
- Great application center with flatpak and Flathub enabled out of the box, which already covers almost every application needed by a regular user
- Graphical driver installer
- Ability to install apt packages without terminal
- Good pack of preinstalled applications - it’s already possible to do almost everything regular user needs, like browsing the web, working with office documents, reading PDF files and so on
- Driverless printer support out of the box
Also it looks awesome out of the box (especially after recent redesign), and works fine even on not so capable hardware
The only thing I don’t really like about it is it being based on LTS release of ubuntu, which may lead to some problems on newer hardware. Still can be fixed by installing mainline kernel and adding ppa repositories, but it’s not really easy to do without using terminal
Probably linux mint, but every distro will lead to some googling. However mint makes it very easy to just set and forget.
but every distro will lead to some googling
This is really important to know going into any new tech platform. You will need to search things up, this is true even on something like iOS where they spend billions of dollars on making everything as intuitive as possible.
I’ll give a +1 for Mint and Pop_OS!, especially Mint (Cinnamon edition) for people who don’t want to learn a new layout either.
Probably POP_OS to my understanding, I haven’t used it much myself but I hear good things in terms of a “Just works” distro.
Yeah the question is never going to be
How to do with GUI?
It’s rather going to be
why on earth would I do that when I can just click some buttons on windows?
or
Can’t we just use settings menu?
Yeah showing people how the terminal works is great for power users, but it does nothing for the average user, and kinda is part of the reason so many people think that all linux is is the terminal
Really as much as the more tech savvy might not like it, if we want to see higher adoption of linux we need to spread awareness of just how much easier it is to do things in the Linux GUI than it is in Windows
Like for instance, I can install almost whatever I would ever want with a click of a button without opening a browser, meanwhile I’ve never managed to get the Microsoft store to actually install things that I paid real money for
Yeah, you’re right GUI configuration is huge for long-term market share increase for home desktop use. Jokes aside I do use GUI apps/settings mixed with CLI apps/commands, just depends on the situation and my mood, some things I’ll use both depending if my hands are on the keyboard or mouse already lol.
Some things I can just not do with GUI personally is Git, package building, or using a package manager, I perfer CLI commands for those things because I find the GUI options less efficient/slower/more annoying. But I feel we do need GUI options for everything so people aren’t forced into the command line against their will.
Options are good and in a perfect world you should be able do do anything from a GUI or CLI!
Friends don’t let friends GUI. ;-)
GUI more like ewwie
I open it up and see beautiful moving colours! hohahaha! and everything feeeels sloower
That’s me with Git. If my colleagues need help and they’re on the CLI, I can just literally spell them out everything they need. But if they’re using some sort of Git GUI, it’s always like, WTF are all these buttons? Are you sure, Git even has that many features? How do I tell it to do XYZ with certain flags? Are you sure, this isn’t missing some Git features?
I think git’s CLI is not a good user interface but with how ubiquitous it is as a VCS, it’s better to power through the oddities and become proficient in it.
Yeah, I always tell new trainees, they can use a GUI, but they won’t get around learning how the CLI works, as when they look anything up about Git, they’ll only find commands.
This is myself with my colleagues. I use Lazygit and GitUI daily, otherwise I would spend a lifetime typing out numerous Git commands every day. And it is amazing how much one can do and how fast with these TUIs. But if a colleague needs something, and of course, they do not have these programs, all I can is just shrug and point them to the internet, as I have already forgotten all the little flags and parameters for more advanced commands. It is incredible how easy these TUIs make Git to use.
Well, cool that it works for you, but that is kind of why I stay away from the GUIs, too: I do not want to forget how the CLI works. Or even just become less comfortable in it.
When you need to look anything up about Git, you get told commands, and I need to mess with Git repos on remote servers every now and then.
Also, even if I can’t help colleagues in their GUI, they generally have the CLI somewhere.I do use a shell with type-ahead suggestions to alleviate the typing somewhat.
a gui is legitimately slower in most contexts. I will never understand why people feel like they need one so bad.
edit: spelling mistakes.
Hmm, now that I think about it, I want to say a GUI provides a (potentially false) sense of security.
At the very least, it gives an intuitive sense of direction, so that you can use a program with very little understanding of it. Things like Handbrake over ffmpeg I’d prefer over having to look up how to do 2-pass conversions online every time I want to make one.
The menus tell you all of the things it can do in a relatively intuitive way. It’s easier and quicker to get started than reading the help/man page and remembering commands. Much shallower learning curve – but of course, a much lower ceiling on what you can do as your proficiency grows.
Unfortunately people will never use anything that requires cli usage for basic operations en masse which kinda hinders significant adoption of Linux
Basically me whenever I try to use Linux on a permanent basis. What’s that, you want to run a program at boot? You’ll have to do it all in CLI and there’s a pretty high chance you’ll brick the OS. Oh, and don’t make any spelling mistakes!
Honestly terminal commands are like a picky voice assistant that you talk to via keyboard… you tell the computer to do something and it just does it, or it fusses at you that you screwed up something.
Clicking stuff ends up being the slower way once you know what you are doing…
At some point, I realize that I’m furiously clicking the up arrow twenty times just to reenter a command that was two words long anyway and far quicker to type out. Not even CTRL+R would make it more efferent than typing.
Even with mid-command matching, like “ctrl+r Doc” for “cd Documents”? Just in case not everyone has found that you don’t have to match from the beginning of the string you’re looking for.
What!? You have forever changed my life. Teach me more sensei.
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People say Linux is complicated while you can literally just run one script and have everything setup.
Mood, I love the terminal
