please, my fellow developer. You use Linux, you love Linux, you live and breathe it. I ask you. can we please start using the GUI?
I know hitting tab and typing directly into bash is a fairly simple way of navigation, but seriously, its 2008… can we adopt the mouse now? i really like him, and lets face it. typing out 92,567,823 characters to install a fucking program just isn’t quicker than single clicking “setup.exe” admit it. until we overcome this hurdle, the big M$ and the Fruit will always be in the lead. they have adopted usability. so please, my fellow penguins… catch on. its not that hard to do… after all.. the developers of the godforsaken IE did it, it cant be that hard.. quit being elitist assholes and just make Linux user friendly. its solid. its fast, it runs, and its secure. we don’t need to continue working on IPv4 TCP/IP packages from 1996. we need to break away from the shell and make this iceberg float, instead of all of us swimming to hold it above water. yes, you can still install Yakuake, and type into shell and type away to your hearts content. but it does NOT need to be the basis of this wonderful OS.
Please listen.
You can already install programs with 1 or 2 clicks with either Linux Mint’s MintInstall, gnome-app-install or Synaptic.
However, you seem to be either stupid or way overly exaggerating. What’s easier:
1. The Windows way: Go to mozilla.com, navigate to the correct download link, wait for the download, double click the .exe (possibly answer 2 different UAC questions if you’re using Vista) and hit next a bunch of time till it’s installed.
2. The CLI linux way: Go to Applications-Accessories and select Terminal (just as easy as opening up IE in Windows to download Firefox), then type into terminal: “sudo apt-get install firefox”, enter your password, and bam, Firefox is downloading and installing for you.
I’d personally say the latter is better, and if you can prove to me how i’m wrong, i’d be more than happy to discuss it with you like an adult.
I cant prove you wrong, you are 100% correct on this. though, for average users –example someone’s mom –, they don’t know, or want to mess with CLI..
also, how many people have mint, synaptic, or anything else to make life easier. what i’m getting at is that these things should be DEFAULT, part of the whole. not random packages on the far reaches of the internet. read: fresh install of OS comes with 1-click app installation.
yes, i know synaptic/ubuntu.. yada yada.. what about everyone else?
and thanks for calling me stupid. really.. i appreciate it. asshole.
Beingdevious,
If you use Gnome, you just go to the Applications menu and click “Add/Remove.” Choose your program and put in your password. That’s all you have to do. There are no questions to answer for 98% of programs (the ones that don’t need special parameters like servers). That’s insanely easy.
I don’t know what distribution of Linux you are using because you don’t say, but just about every one has a process like this now.
The issue about GUIs is with giving directions. If I want to help people out (which I do on my blog), it’s a lot more difficult to explain (and possibly easier to screw up) “Go to Applications and click on Add/Remove. When the dialog appears, search for ‘limewire.’ There will be three entries. Click the check box next to ‘gnutella’ and click the ‘Apply’ button. Enter your password when prompted.” than is is to type “Open a terminal. Type ‘sudo apt-get install gnutella’ and enter your password.”
A textual format like a web page lends itself to explaining use via the terminal. If I’m explaining the GUI, I tend to use videos.
Hope that clears the problem up. You don’t need a command line for day-to-day use, but it’s really nice to have a good one in addition to a GUI.
Daeng Bo,
http://ibeentoubuntu.com
maybe things have changed in the last 6 months?
i have switched back over to windows, unfortunately.. mostly due to work.
last i was using SuSE 10.2, and recently(within the last month) i installed a clean ubuntu 7
both were wonderful systems, but the average user, aka.. my gf, mother, random friends… could not get the hang of it off the bat. they could use the internet, but as soon as they ended up with a tarball or gzip, they were lost.. even though they had a GUI archiver.
i dunno. i just still see too much reliance on CLI for mainstream linux, and that poses a hurdle the common windows user does not, or is not ready to cross.
Daeng, nice blog!
i agree, linux is a big frustration due to too much reliance on cli
i know there are gui programs but they are just artificially limited, or not installed by default. when i say artificially limited i mean on windows the same thing can perfectly be achieved with a gui program. just not on linux.
if one day a distro will recognize my usb cf reader and lets me format the cf card in it without having to ever look at cli, and all that out of the box, then maybe linux will have a chance,
until then, not.