this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
755 points (97.5% liked)

linuxmemes

28899 readers
2266 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
  • Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
  • Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
    • 5. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Language/язык/Sprache
  • This is primarily an English-speaking community. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
  • Comments written in other languages are allowed.
  • The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
  • Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
    • 6. (NEW!) Regarding public figuresWe all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations.
  • Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
  • We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
  • Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed.
    • Β 

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.

    founded 2 years ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith@lemmy.world
    zephyr@lemmy.world
    rtxn@lemmy.world
    755
    Developer appreciation time! (discuss.tchncs.de)
    submitted 18 hours ago by Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
    140 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 149 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

    You can't copy and paste into a GUI, and it's painful to help people to use them.

    [–] tazeycrazy@feddit.uk 34 points 16 hours ago (6 children)

    So you want newbies blindly entering scripts to there command line and not knowing what that are doing.

    [–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 18 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

    They're blindly doing it either way. I understand and want GUIs as well, but dumping commands into terminal is starting to seem easier than "go here click this, now click that"

    [–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

    Open "app" -> open menu -> select option -> change this /Β  push this button.

    Just as easy to write as a command. But many people (me included) is so used to go the CLI route that the GUI way is only an afterthought.

    [–] Speiser0@feddit.org 8 points 7 hours ago

    Just as easy to write as a command.

    No. First you, the helper, have to find the option in the gui. Then you have to look up every step in the path through the gui. At every step you have to find the english name for the button/menu (localization exists), and manually type it (because you can't select and copy the text of the gui (by default at least)). Also just referring to buttons by name sometimes won't work. It is so cumbersome.

    [–] PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 3 points 7 hours ago

    I can't find this menu, where is it?

    Now you have to go figure out what they're actually looking at and whether it's what you said to do or not. Command line copy-paste removes any uncertainty.

    [–] jj4211@lemmy.world 9 points 12 hours ago

    If it's "oh, you can open up [application X] and it's easy to figure it out, and there's videos out there to cover your use case", then ok.

    But if it's to help a user with a very specific task and they want their hand held, well from a GUI perspective I'm either making a bunch of screenshots or maybe even a tutorial video or a screen share session.... Or I shoot them a relatively short CLI command that does it and move on to other things.

    It is usually much shorter to tell someone the CLI to do something than it is to try to train them on a GUI for the same thing. If it's well-trodden subject matter, well they probably already found a youtube tutorial and didn't even have to ask.

    [–] Beacon@fedia.io 14 points 15 hours ago

    And where a typo can cause a catastrophic outcome

    [–] M137@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

    their* they/those*

    [–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

    Teach them to double check against the man page before pasting, would be my guess.

    [–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

    But then the CLI wouldn't be faster anymore and the whole argument most people keep bringing up falls apart.

    Also those man pages aren't even remotely written to be understandable by Linux novices most of the time…

    [–] GojuRyu@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

    But then the CLI wouldn't be faster anymore and the whole argument most people keep bringing up falls apart.

    It is much faster for the one giving the answer. Also, the looking up the man page is something you only do the first time. With the gui the user should also verify before blindly following instructions, but it is usually harder to find proper documentation of gui features than cli commands.

    Also those man pages aren't even remotely written to be understandable by Linux novices most of the time…

    That is a fair point. They are dense, technical and at times pretty hard to read. But when a novice asks for help they are always going to either trust blindly or verify. Verifying can be a difficult task for a novice no matter if gui or cli is suggested. I do think most novices would trust the gui way more and feel more in control of it, even if they are basically doing the same thing.

    [–] emerald@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 11 hours ago

    Ideally piping directly from curl to bash, yes ~~/s~~

    [–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 51 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

    Or pipe GUI output into another GUI function.

    Or >> log.txt

    [–] bryndos@fedia.io 18 points 17 hours ago (1 children) 
    basic_task_list = ['copy and paste', 'install package', 'type', 'keyboard', 'read and write' ]

for basic_task in basic_task_list:
    print(f"""
        Newbies can't {basic_task}.
        They never {basic_task} in windows.
        Windows  has replaced {basic_task} with copilot, this is what linux needs to do to compete.

        How will linux ever hope to attract windows user if it still maintains this ancient hacker 1337xor tools like  {basic_task}?

        Users just want to turn on computer and watch it do computance - how does linux not get this?
    """)
    [–] madjo@piefed.social 16 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

    What's easier to support?

    "Ok, open app commandX,
    now click on the button labeled Y.. It's just there, just below your mouse cur... oh now you've moved your mouse... no, not there, it's more to the left, up a bit... down a bit, it's labeled Y. Third one from the top.
    Yes, that's the one, now click it.
    ok, in this pop up you type "super secret code thing',
    no, capitalization doesn't matter.
    Yes. I'll spell it "s u p e r {space} s e c r e t {space} c o" what do you mean, you don't have a T on your keyboard? "

    Or. "Open up the terminal and type this code: commandX --CodeY This will do XYZ. After it's done, can you tell me the error it says on the screen?"

    But yes, I agree, the GUI looks nicer.

    [–] bryndos@fedia.io 1 points 45 minutes ago

    I dgaf about support. (i'm naturally perky).

    Back in dos there was a systemic encouragement to users to at least learn something about a computer. Nowadays windows apologists seem to relish how much it dumbs down computers, (or any over supported system).

    They won't learn to ride the bike until someone removes the stabiliser brackets - and Gates is one of the cunts who figured out that he makes more cash by welding them on.

    [–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago

    Exactly. You can tell someone to type a command, and ask for the output. Otherwise you're spending 90% of your time asking someone to explain what they see, and searching for buttons that just move around from week to week.

    [–] Strider@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

    Yep, this is just one factor. It's difficult for people not to judge a book by its cover.

    Correctly done, cli is superior for a lot of things.