Moderation Note: This was split from What do former Manjaro users like about EOS? - #211
It also shows that in EOS, developers have been able to make a terminal-centric distribution friendly and easy to use for beginners, intermediate and professionals alike.
Well. I still donât know if Iâd consider it âfriendlyâ for first time Linux users. I canât call any distro that revolves around the terminal easy to use for beginners. For many of us itâs hard to imagine being a true beginner. The very first time you saw a terminal. Even if itâs copy and paste into the terminal, a true honest beginner doesnât know what sudo is. They donât understand possible consequences or why -Sy or -S or Syu works or doesnât work.
I think that helps kind of keep EnOS maybe just slightly off of the Linux Mint type radar. Maybe the community doesnât end up enormous because of it. I also feel like it may help get rid of some of the update threads at other places where you can look and see 10 posts in 10 hours saying âX update broke my _______â where if they just opened the help section and looked they will see it was fixed 7 hours earlier after the 2nd post.
Iâm not opposed to not being a massive community. Iâd rather have 10 guys helping out 1 that wants to learn, than an army with a guy just copy and pasting things into their unknown to use terminal that ends up doing nothing, or even worse, breaking something and they have no idea why, because they have no idea what was happening anyway.
And yet, all of the early home computers were terminal-based. In my view, âbeginningâ is a mind-set, not an ability. Being able to randomly press buttons without breaking something isnât user-friendly, itâs idiot-proofing. 
Yeah, ââbeginnerââ is only a mindset.
I installed Linux every fifth year or so, beginning in the year 2000, if I remember correctly.
But I couldnât make head or tail of it, couldnât even set the frigginâ display resolution correctly, so every effort was abortive, haha.
Until late last year year, when I figured that Linux is made by goddamn humans, so a human being should be able to handle it, for chrissake. And then went straight to a Debian base net-install and experiementing with DEâs on top, with little problem (and some reading). It is all in the head.
I think most of the world is trying too hard to save people from themselves. It just enables people to be lazy. I think thatâs part of how we ended up with so much telemetry. It was good intentions. But the only way to save people from themselves is to constantly monitor them and take away their freedom to fail. You make a really good point. Failure is also learning. Itâs not always bad.
Hey! HEY! Richard Stallman is GOD 
Itâs GNU/Linux, mind you
Sorry, i just had to⌠
Come on! It was never ever good intentions. And i have never seen a project where telemetry even helped development, usually itâs reverse 
The terminal is the most efficient and the simplest way for a human to communicate with a computer.
The idea that the terminal is somehow more difficult to use is just conditioning from Windows and Mac. What is actually difficult is to unlearn Windows and Mac. Using the terminal is super easy and great for beginners (at least those who have not been conditioned to fear it).
Of course, there exist tasks where having a graphical interface is very helpful, even necessary. An example is graphics programs like GIMP and Inkscape. While editing photos or videos in a terminal is possible, it tends to be very inefficient. However, these are the exceptions, not the rule: for the majority of tasks, the terminal is the more efficient interface and almost always easier to master.
When I was five years old, I couldnât speak a word of English and I barely knew how to read and write in my native language, yet I used MS-DOS fairly comfortably. The Linux shell is much easier to use than MS-DOS. So I always find it ridiculous when people complain about terminal being difficult to learn. It really isnât. Itâs a completely irrational fear, a consequence of conditioning by Microsoft and Apple.
Indeed, a user who migrates from another distribution, such as the Debian line to the Arch line, can also be called a novice. In fact, in todayâs Linux world, everyone already has a basic level of knowledge, compared to the situation twenty years ago, when everything in Linux was so mystical to those who didnât know it.
Indeed, a user who migrates from another distribution, such as the Debian line to the Arch line, can also be called a novice. In fact, in todayâs Linux world, everyone already has a basic level of knowledge, compared to the situation twenty years ago, when everything in Linux was so mystical to those who didnât know it. I remember, as a Windows user, how strange the virtual window, kernel compilation, installation from source, and so on were, which are mostly not needed today.
I donât think itâs difficulty problem per se, itâs just some people are audio/visuals more (including myself), than text-adicts, so itâs harder to grasp terminal from first sightâŚ
But technically of course if youâll learn to use terminal and learn code it will always benefit you 
You are usually more comfortable doing things as youâve done them before, even if that is not the most efficient way to do them. Changing habits is difficult.
Nah, thatâs true, but what iâm saying is more biological, brain-wire type of thingsâŚ
Some people are just naturally blind to something like wall of text, if you catch my drift, and itâs hard to get around it unless you have a strong motivation to and train harder 
And even then such people would prefer good GUI probably 
I donât really think that is fair. I have spent a significant portion of my life working from a CLI. I also learned that way. There are still things that I find are more efficient to be done with a mouse/GUI.
I agree with @keybreak that different types of people are wired differently. It may be more efficient for you to work from the terminal 100% of the time but that doesnât inherently mean it is true for everyone.
Personally, I find some things more efficient from the terminal and others more efficient with a GUI.
At the same time, in those days, a much smaller portion of the population was using a computer. I remember in the late 80s, early 90s when people were losing their jobs because they were unable to adapt to using a computer. Once Windows/MacOS became prevalent this became much less common.
I was 8 or 9 years old when I got my first computer: Amstrad CPC.
Included were a handful of floppy disks and a huge manual written in English (which at that time was a new language for me).
No internet, and with only the manual and a few German IT magazines, I managed to do a lot of things with it as a complete beginner.
Jonathon is right IMO. Just because a distro is terminal-centric doesnât strictly mean itâs unsuitable for beginners.
Could not agree more. It is a preference also. I am more visual, like to see icons (art) dance before me. It is how I am wired, so GUIs fit the bill sometimes.
I, perhaps incorrectly, assumed that that was obvious. I added a paragraph to my post above, just to clear any confusions. Of course, it depends on the task youâre doing.
And yes, for people with dyslexia or a similar disorder (or just people who are not in the habit of reading a lot of text), using the terminal might be more challenging. I am not suggesting that the terminal is the only âKreĹĄimir approvedâ way for humans to communicate with computers 
I am, however, convinced that average computer users would find the terminal to be much simpler and more efficient for a vast majority of tasks, if they did not have to first unlearn their habits of using the graphical interface for everything (thanks to Microsoft and Apple conditioning).
You reminded me first time iâve encountered internet cable, my first 6 month reaction was:
âWait a minuteâŚIf this is connection to outer-worldâŚThat means iâm vulnerable to anyone on the other end?!â
So iâve manually disconnected cable each time i havenât used it (which was a lot) back then!
But that was close actually, to this day itâs kinda security 101 if youâre really serious about it 
Or you can get over yourself and spend some time writing a script for common tasks, to avoid manually using terminal! 
I count both writing scripts and invoking scripts also as using the terminal. 
Ah. . . that beautiful day off feeling when two weeks of updates are all finished and are up to date! Nice
and easy. One word and itâs very aptly named yay because thatâs the feeling of ease after a round of updates!
Yes, itâs one of lifeâs pleasuresâŚ
