On 09-Nov-05 Ten wrote:
I think, and this is just me, that in order to really get an advantage from upgrading to a GNU/Linux, you're going to be best not shying away from the console anyway.
There really is nothing inherently bad or unusable about consoles.
As an aside, there's *got* to be some way to remove the fear of the console for the average user. Whether it's consoles in funky anti-aliased truetype fonts with images/music/css theming/whatever in a gnome/kde app, or even turing-type rubber-fork "find me the mp3s I saved in july last year" type stuff, if we could just crack this heinous culture that's built up against using fast, expressive, intuitive typed commands, then people would REALLY be moving to linux.
I (personally) think a key to selling the console/command line would be to demonstrate what you can do with it, which you can't do, or only with difficulty, using point&click.
People can see the theoretical argument that with a GUI you can only get what has been planted in the menus, and anything else is unavailable, but will not feel moved by this if they don't see that they might need things not in the GUI.
At this point I think one can divide "People" into two camps (with some overlap).
There are those who have come to see using a computer as being like a trip to a brightly lit superstore. Anything that's there that you might like to have is easily visible and ready to grab. Their needs for what they'd like to have, have been formed by repeat visits to the superstore.
And there are those whose needs are formed by how life impinges on them, and they look for a way to turn their computer to fulfilling these needs. They are like the folks who will go out and hunt in all sorts of places for the precise unusual thing they've set their minds on.
Then there are little practical details, like the fact that most simple things are more wuivkly anf easily done via the command line -- conpare typing "ls" with pulling down a menu, clicking on drive letter to open a menu of files and subdirs, and so on.
On the other hand, is can be easier to use a menu system for certain programs (xcdroast comes to mind) where the everday options are can be encapsulated in a few easily accessible menus, as compared with the rather hairy and long command lines you would need to do the same job via a console.
So in that sort of respect it's horses for courses, and you'll be building a fence against yourself if you reject one or the other.
I think the GUI/console divide is a relatively recent development, in my estimation since 1995 or later, probably nearer 2000.
Prior to that, most users still had a memory of DOS, and command lines were in everyday use even in that world.
And of course the Unix tribe of that era (or any other) needed no persuasion of the value of the command line.
Best wishes, Ted.
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