But people don’t memorize which subpage of the control panel leads to what they need. They go after content clues. You need to change your ip adress? Well it’s probably somewhere in the settings under the category network.

But cli you have to memorize. It doesn’t give you any context clues

Most people do know how to use a computer though. Windows and macOS have been around for a very long time by now, and both have not required you to use the CLI for anything but very extreme cases in more than 25 years. You’re not starting with a blank slate. They know how a GUI is supposed to work. It is self explanatory to them. Shoving them towards a CLI is making them relearn stuff they already knew how to do. There’s a reason a lot of Windows migrants end up with KDE or Cinnamon. It’s familiar, it’s easy. Most people do in fact associate a cog with settings. CLI aren’t familiar to most people and thus a much larger hurdle.

Also, I’m not talking about fixing problems. The CLI is a perfectly valid tool to fix problems. Not everything has to be graphical. Just enough that you don’t need it unless something breaks.

The terminal will never reach mainstream adoption because it already had in the 80s and 90s and people progressed away from CLI and towards GUI. It’s archaic. It’s a fallback. It’s useful, sure. I use it regularly. But not because I‘d not just prefer having a graphical front end. It’s only more useful because the respective front end is lacking.

Also, the „shut up and go use Windows/macOS“ attitude seems very elitist to me. You‘d rather have the non techies suffer high prices, privacy violations, etc., have them suffer microsoft/Apple instead of making the system more inviting for them? And you‘d rather have another company (like valve is doing right now btw) swoop in and offer what you refuse to entertain because you want everyone to do things the way you like to do things.

The CLI is very much an enthusiast/professional tool. It isn‘t and it shouldn’t be the default in this day and age. Saying everyone should know how to use the CLI is like saying everyone should know how to use a DSLR camera instead of just relying on their phone’s or everyone should know how to drive a manual transmission car. Those are all great skills to have but most people just want a snapshot or a car that gets them from A to B safely. They don’t want to think about it. And most people just want a computer that gets out of their way. And why shouldn’t they have it?

And I’m not saying the terminal shouldn’t exist and that people shouldn’t be encouraged to learn about how it functions. But there should always be the option to completely avoid it. Because of you want mainstream adoption, you need to face the sad reality, that the Mainstream doesn’t want to look under the hood. And if you don’t want mainstream adoption, why?

A good modern gui also presents itself in front of you. It directs your attention to important buttons/options. You don’t need any prior knowledge to know that a cog shaped button labeled settings will take you to settings. Good UIs are self explanatory. CLI are not.

To be able to use the terminal, you either need another person to tell you the necessary commands or search for a tutorial yourself, either online or somewhere else.

That’s not intuitive. It’s not too hard to learn, but you need to actively pursue learning how to do it. An average person doesn’t want to do that. An average person doesn’t even want to memorize more than one password. They should. But they won’t. Thus, password managers were created. And non technical minded people still don’t even use those.

You got to look at it from the point of view of someone who has no interest in knowing any more about their computer than how to turn it on, where to put their photos and how to open their browser and maybe an office suite. The kind of people that wouldn’t even update the system, if there wasn’t a notification asking for it. They’re not stupid. They just don’t care about computers and don’t want to spend any more mental power on them than necessary, the same way you wouldn’t want to think about manually keeping the timing of your car’s engine on point for the current conditions. You just want it to get you safely from A to B. Or maybe you do, but I assure you, most people wouldn’t.

But why shouldn’t it be for everyone? Why do grandmothers have to use Windows or macOS?

I mean, yes, for now, Linux isn’t a everyman‘s OS. But why shouldn’t the community strive to make it so? Isn’t the idea behind FOSS „by the people for the people“ not „by enthusiasts for enthusiasts“?

And I’m not saying that every distro should be idiot proof. The Arches and Gentoos do have their rightful place. I just think, the mindset should be more „how can we make Linux as a whole more accessible and inviting for everyone, so FOSS can become the dominant type of software one day“ and less (and I’m exaggerating here) „how dare regular people want to benefit from the same freedom as me, this should be for enthusiasts only“.

Because at the moment, only valve is really doing something to make Linux more mainstream and do you really want that movement in the hand of a company instead of the people?

Thing is, terminal came first, then came a gui tool make things easier, more intuitive and then came touch to make things even easier.

Saying users should just get used to using the terminal feels to me more like someone designing a smartphone in 2025, that requires you to use a trackball and physical keyboard and then complaining about people wanting touchscreens, when they clearly could just get used to the trackball.

Of course they could, but why should they want to?

Using the terminal is not the next evolution, it’s technically two steps back. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or doesn’t have it’s place. It can be incredibly efficient for power users. But most users aren’t power users. They want the operating system to get out of their way so they can focus on what they actually want to do. And that’s not learning how to update their system via the CLI.

Why? A computer is not a car. You should have to learn to use certain programs, sure. Can’t expect people to master spreadsheet or video editing programs by default. And maybe you should learn about the dangers of the Internet. But, at least in my opinion, the operating system should require as little attention as possible. It should be as intuitive as possible for anyone touching it for the first time. CLI is useful, sure. But it’s definitely not intuitive and thus inaccessible for many users.

The moment you need a secondary resource to be able to use your system, that system has failed for the vast majority of users. And it’s near impossible to learn how to use the terminal without a secondary resource. A good GUI you can figure out pretty quickly.

But why not make Linux idiot proof? What would you lose from the existence of a distro that has an easy gui tool for everything an average computer user would ever do?

The terminal wouldn’t go away or lose it’s functionality, if that’s how you prefer doing things but it would open up the benefits of Linux to a way bigger audience.

Because knowing how to use a terminal is not the same as knowing how to use a computer. Windows doesn’t need you to use the cmd for anything most people would ever do. Neither does macOS, Android, iOS, even ChromeOS. Only Linux can’t get rid of that stigma and I just don’t get why.

Why is it better to force users to run updates via the terminal than having a menu for that in the settings or the „AppStore“ (graphical package manager) or a „Update“ app?

Why don’t you want Linux to become easy enough to use that my grandma could handle it?

Because knowing terminal commands is neither accessible nor feasible for the average computer user. It might be more efficient, if you take the time to learn it but the average computer user doesn’t want to spend that extra time. They want everything to be accessible and to be easy.

Linux should always have the choice to use the terminal. But if you want the day of the Linux desktop to actually arrive some day, you need at least a couple of distros that don’t require you to know what a package manager is.

Yep. Look at something like the PinePhone. It has hardware switches that can disable camera, microphone and all types of wireless communication, respectively. And no need to degoogle, since it’s not googled in the first place (runs either Manjaro, PostmarketOS, Mobian or whatever you put on there yourself). Only drawbacks: it’s not really cheap for the specs and a little hard to find these days. But there are probably comparable devices out there.

A good replacement for people who can’t get away from MS Office might be OnlyOffice. Looks like MS Office, uses the same file types and is free of charge albeit not open source.

But the point where you’d have to set up a VM for someone who’s not technically inclined is probably not the point for them to switch to Linux.

Also, I think the problem with Linux‘ reliance on terminal commands is less that it’s not possible to avoid them – a lot of distros, like the ones you’ve named are indeed very easy to use without – it’s that if you try to look up a tutorial for anything, it will be using the terminal.

For example, if I search on DDG for something as simple as „how to update Ubuntu“, only the fourth entry mentions that there’s a gui updater. The rest tell you to use apt via the terminal. It’s not wrong of course but that’s not what my mum would want to see. And even with searches like „how to install vlc media player on mint“, while the first result does include how to do it via the gui, it’s the last of four options explained in the article. The first three use the terminal again.

Stuff like that happens a lot in the Linux world. And that obviously breeds the conception of Linux‘ complete reliance on the terminal to function properly. The community oftentimes is not very newbie friendly, if said newbie doesn’t want to jump in the deep end.

Ich ess immer brav meine Knochen und Ohren, damit mein Sellerie und meine Pilze gesund bleiben.

My dad is also a huge Outlook fan. I think you need to just have been using it for 20+ years

I still quite liked Black Flag and Unity (although far from perfect, especially at launch) and even Origins was pretty good. But Ubisoft Quebec just managed to poop on AC lore multiple times, most egregiously with odyssey.

God, I hated that game. I miss my classic Assassin’s Creed.

Can I just have a Parker IM Ballpoint? I hate plastic pens.

Well, for my boss it’s partially virtue signaling for opinionated customers and tesla just isn’t what they’d like to see anymore…

It’s bullshit but it’s business, I suppose. In the past, customers have complained because colleagues arrived in a car from a higher status competitor brand.

Can you really get rid of it by now? Who’d buy it? Most people can’t just throw away a car, even if it’s associated with a fascist.

Talked about that with my boss recently. He drives a Tesla (has been for a few years) and he says, while he’d like to replace it with something less controversial (besides his personal opinions, also because some of our customers are large German car manufacturers and they do have strong opinions) but, he says, there’s no comparable electric car in a comparable price range (of what you’d get for a 3 or 4 year old model Y) and business isn’t doing so well that he could afford sinking money into something that drives as well and as far on a charge, so for now he’ll have to keep his Tesla and an eye open for a good deal on something better.

So I’d say, if you bought a Tesla within the last year or so, you should’ve known better. If you bought one some time before and want to get rid of it, it’s not always that easy, if you actually need a good car to replace it with.

You forget the unfortunate mentality people have regarding the sick.