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Linux or Landfill? End of Windows 10 Leaves PC Charities with Tough Choice
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this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Lack of user-friendlylinesss ? What ? How much more user-friendly can we get ?
Most things are point & click
Is this a joke? The main way most Linux users install software is still via the command line.
On Windows the command line is an exceptional thing you sometimes have to use for troubleshooting. On Linux it's the default way everything is done.
For example how do you stop a service on Linux? The top answer just assumes command line.
If I search for how to do it with a GUI I get a 5 year old post explaining that all the GUI attempts are dead.
Now if I search for Windows, I get these instructions (from the AI but they sound like I remember it):
And the top SO question is someone asking specifically how to do it with the command line because the GUI way is so easy and obvious.
That's just one random example. Not even getting to hardware support, ease of installation, etc.
I reject the premise that the command line is not user friendly.
With either a GUI or a command line, the first step is going to be "Search the internet for the instructions."
The second step for the command line option is "ctrl-c, ctrl-v". The task is now complete.
The GUI option is only superior if it allows the user to skip the "Search for it" step. If it does not, now you are manually searching some arcane hierarchy for the specific location the developer decided to place that option.
The whole point of the GUI is to be more intuitive. If you need to go to the internet to realize how to do the basic stuff, that means your GUI “failed” in its purpose.
That’s still unavoidable for very complex UIs though, but still you measure how good a UI is at helping people accomplish their tasks.
Agreed. And I certainly use a GUI more than a command line.
My point is only that the command line should not be considered "unfriendly" to the user.
I don't think "intuitive" is the proper metric for determining user friendliness. I think "ease of accomplishing a given task" is much more important. There are many tasks for which the command line is faster and simpler than using a GUI. Windows tends to hide these simpler, faster methods from the user. By regularly exposing the user to the CLI, Linux pushes the user to learn them.
Every button click is a dialog with the computer. It presents you with options and context, and waits for you to make a decision. Using a GUI, even simple tasks are going to take several dialogs to accomplish.
Most of the time, though, the user knows the exact task that needs to be accomplished, and is just appeasing the computer by going through each dialog to get to the point.
In these cases, the command line can enable the user to skip all that uneccessary dialog and go straight to execution of the intended task. I would say that this is not "unfriendly".