nah Kali Linux for hacker joe
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I am surprised to see so much anti-terminal sentiment, on what I assume is everyone’s favorite “terminal-centric distro”! ![]()
Personally, I have had a lot of fun learning to use the terminal. There is a unique challenge in doing administration on a headless Linux box, where the command line is the only thing available. It forces you to learn to use new tools or alternatives to what you are used to, and it can be rewarding when you figure out how to get something working through terminal commands only.
A lot of command-line tools have built-in help options, or you can always grep a man page to quickly figure out what to do if you are using a tool for the first time or have forgotten some of the options that are available. There is no need to memorize tomes of obscure information; a lot of it can be pulled up on the fly right in the terminal itself if you get stumped.
Once you get comfortable working in the terminal and start spending more time doing stuff on the command line, it can be tempting to try to do everything in the terminal–even stuff for which there is a perfectly practical GUI application you would normally use. Maybe this does not happen to everyone, but I know I am not the only one because stuff like this exists:
As for the suggestion that GUI apps make things more accessible: sure, in some cases it can be easier to figure stuff out in a GUI just poking around. But the command line can make certain things more accessible too.
Take for example writing a script, or cron job, or a systemd service. I am no scripting wizard, but in general I can figure out how to write a script that accomplishes a custom task. The possibilities and flexibility for customizing your system this way are essentially unlimited. This opens up a level of access to my computer that a GUI tool cannot provide, even on a “GUI-first” OS like Windows or MacOS.
I also think the resistance to editing a config file is kind of unwarranted, fstab or otherwise. There is an abundance of documentation available for using this file. I mean, to compare with a GUI application: would you say Darktable, AutoCAD, or other complex GUI applications are badly designed because you will have to read a doc to learn how some of the tools work?
I’m not saying GUI tools are bad, or the command line is better, or anything like that. But I don’t think making a distro “more GUI” automatically makes it better, because for a lot of us the power and extensibility of the command line is one of the more compelling reasons to use Linux in the first place.
And to not forget… getting help and apply the help to fix Linux is way easier using terminal and commands, compared to do the same over GUI and try to explain to someone via a forum or chat how they should click here in a GUI and then do this in this tab and then change the setting to that.
People do use a lot of text input all day long in all the social media and messenger apps… even using markup to format and stuff… so it is really true that they should be able to use the terminal.
The Fear of the terminal is mainly a misinterpretation.
It would be great to see kids in school getting used to the power of terminal usage, and start learning to look under the hood to understand the mechanics of what is the one tool used in every aspect of life today.
I just helped a teacher on Telegram on a project to install EndeavourOS on a bunch of machines to learn about Linux by creating a LAN network for network game.
Let people own the machines not the other way around ![]()
“Should Linux Be More Convenient For Everyone?”
For everyone? There is already ChromeOS ![]()
long talk short ![]()
Okay Chucky! ![]()
Pretty sure you fit Chucky’s profile far beter than I do.
When I first used a terminal, I knew only ls and cd, and it was on M$-DOS 6.0, while I was supposed to be the computer guy at that time
. There was a GUI to hack into advanced settings, the well known Registry Editor (regex), which still exists. There were lots of system options to modify in Computer Properties, and more. You could also do the same in terminal, but there was no real need for that (reading help pages and random web support pages).
That’s what everyone means by convenient. Linux lacks of such a perspective. As many have already explained, devs don’t want to waste time on that. KDE on the other side, provides a lot of GUI settings, but no manuals for modifying settings via terminal.
While there is a lot of info about fstab all over the web and the manuals, nobody from the Linux great distros thought about creating and maintaining a GUI utility to do modifications safely, for the good of the whole Linux community. That’s exactly the problem. Those who have resources, use them to get more money, and those who want to provide good products for the whole Linux community don’t have resources.
.
It’s disappointing how a lot of comments were about what each one prefers for themselves, while the subject question was referring to the rest of the people, not to the minority of current Linux users (or lovers).
A more clear perspective can be when thinking about people who can’t physically achieve what we smart guys easily can. People with disabilities of random kinds. People who are talented in other things except understanding technical manuals. Who is to throw the first rock? Grow up people. You are not the only ones on earth. ![]()
It is clear that we only want good for ourselves and why bother for somebody else’s good.
FWIW, I try. I use my spare time to develop solutions which I don’t need (today, after many years experience), but others with no similar experience would find useful.
As for resolving issues with a terminal, in the old times, there was always a terminal solution, but only in extra CDs like Hiren’s boot cd, and similar (one time useful) utilities. I wish I could say the same for Linux. That’s my perspective.
Enough said. Flames are coming
. I’m gone
…
It’s your picture not mine. ![]()
It’s the image that came up most researching you. ![]()
That’s funny! ![]()
A good GUI will have the vast majority of options covered, and a good GUI will also have tooltips to explain what those options do if it isn’t obvious, but even without the tooltip, you have a well formatted readily available list of possible options you can quickly glance through and if it isn’t obvious what each option does you can look up the one that seems like the one you need.
Granted you can kinda do the same with a config, it just takes longer (that’s really the crux of the matter in the end).
Blender enters the chat… again. ![]()
the cost isn’t reduced flexibility, the cost is that you still have to use the terminal to do those things that you can’t without it ![]()
There is no distro where you can completely avoid the terminal unless your desktop experience happens entirely within a web browser anyways.
I tested this for a year with a distro on my laptop. I used it for a full year without accessing the terminal once. This was difficult for me because I generally do many things via the terminal.
There are distros that are built around not using the terminal.
Let’s be honest, there are plenty of times on Windows where I have been forced to use CLI commands to fix problems as well.
that’s called the ‘Thin Client’ model. On distrowatch there are 3 foss thinclients so I downloaded two for giggles. I tried a friend’s Chromebook maybe 10 years ago and when I could not access a single system file I was not happy with experience…of being no files and one app: chrome. See what the experience is like now…
In other words, you are right, that is the exception. But one of the linux thins is deb and the other with xfce so not sure one could escape the terminal there either.
For a Linux distribution, or the whole Linux community to make Linux more convenient to the every day user, they need some things.
It needs
- a goal to be commonly accepted.
- to give this goal priority over other things, like new features
- devotion to the task
- patience, when expectations for other things to be delivered push
- more and above all, believing to the goal
Today, only individuals have all the above. Distributions, DE groups, etc., are made of different people, with different agendas. This kind of turning around Linux direction to be easy for the majority of normal people, cannot be achieved, unless there was a one-man leadership, like how it happens with the kernel development, or like Ubuntu, when it first started. Like it or not, large organizations (empires, big companies, large communities) cannot go forward quickly, like they could, with democratic leadership. They can make it, but a lot slowly, compared to a one-man-ruler.
Some related content about the subject, which shows the problems and possible solutions, are these:
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A part of the discussion between Brodie with Nate Graham (KDE)
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The legendary (IMHO) statement/explanation of Clem (Mint) about the Xapps goals
Nobody is preventing you from programming a (good) GUI. Or hiring a programmer. Get started. When it’s finished, you can make it available to the general public. This is one part of open source.
I really wish to know how you think a fstab editing GUI app will look like. I also really wish to know what’s exactly so hard about watching a tutorial online to see what you need to do. I also really wish to know why shouldn’t both the terminal and GUI apps co-exist alongside each other.
peak customer service