Ive seen a lot of anti-gui sentiment but nothing I can remember enough to link to

My gripe is “oh, you picked the wrong distro”

I just want my printer to work ffs

Especially since the manpages are not written to always be comprehensible for end-users, but for developers and professionals. Some tools like tldr can help, however they rarely come preinstalled and aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

So you ever tried support with windows? Go to some crappy community site with people who barely know what they are talking about and try some powershell and regedit crap.

Or go read conflicting Microsoft documentation that always seems to make man files look easy.

Its computers. You read stuff to deal with stuff, the OS is irrelevant.

Here’s the thing that a lot of long-term linux users don’t seem to understand: If it involves typing out a command in a terminal, or editing a configuration text file, 99% of casual users are already out. It doesn’t matter if they just copy-paste a command or have change a single number in a text file, they literally don’t even want to try, they consider that “too complicated”.

I just have never had a Linux system that didn’t require some sort of terminal work to fix the occasional bug. A couple of updates ago Fedora left me with conflicting packages that needed the terminal to straighten out.

If you are using Linux you should learn terminal basics. The terminal is a very powerful tool that can be useful if you learn it. That doesn’t mean you need to use it all the time but it is nice to have in some cases.

I’ve been hearing about Linux elitists for the last 20 years, and I have yet to meet one.

Post/browse a help forum, it doesn’t take long to find them

The thing is, simple can mean two things, and they are quite often at odds with each other.

It can mean simple to understand, or simple to use.

For example, a piece of software that’s just a binary, a config file and a man page describing the config file and the software’s behavior is generally quite easy to understand. Like, you can fit the idea of the program entirely into your mind and “comprehend” it, though it may not be easy to use for a novice.

By contrast, a piece of software that contains additional layers for easy of use, like a GUI to edit options, may be simple to use, but not necessarily simple to understand. The additional layers add more complexity that does not contribute to core functionality of the program, it can become unclear what gets changed where when you click on buttons, the config file is likely not documented, human readable or editable, or it may even be a completely opaque configuration database (the registry), … So making the software more simple to use, often makes it harder to comprehend.

I, and I think many other nerds, like software that is simple in the “comprehensible” sense, we want to be able to wrap our head around it completely and we don’t mind putting in a little bit of effort to achieve that comprehension, whereas other people prefer to hit the ground running.

Absolutely agreed, I find it extremely telling that most people who say that have never personally contributed nor donated. Its ok to have expectations but its not ok to make demands from volunteers, thats why so many devs get burnt out and leave.

Those dudes are lost in the sauce. Nobody should be using big endian these days

Wow. Just wow. What a bunch of utter darlings. Just let them stew in their own idiocy.

Edit: To clarify, I mean the people who wrote this readme.

Acting like this is some impossible task is a bit of a stretch. It’s 2 commands.

LOL yes, I had a look at those too when I was looking for a more minimal terminal. Noped the fuck out when I read you had to recompile the tools to configure them.

It’s not that this is beyond my skill level, but that is just so … why would I want to do that?

You need to edit a C header file used as a config file, and run make and use the resulting executable file. That hardly keeps out anyone.

At the same time DWM is very convenient, and so was WMII.

The Arch Wiki is so nice

Documentation has gotten worse too. Veronica Explains discussed this issue in one of their videos. If you look at some good examples of documentation like the Commodore 64 manual, it explains concepts to an audience unfamiliar with computers in a way that’s easy to understand. Lots of modern software doesn’t have docs like this anymore. Then, on top of that, you have the condescending users in help forums.

The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community.

You should be careful with that. Because what exactly are those toxic parts, when deciding upon strategy of fighting against them, might be understood differently.

That’s why most elitists on Linux spaces don’t know WTF they are talking about, but the elitists who deed have been pressed out earlier.

Also I really don’t see any problem with pointing someone to a place in a well-written manual. After answering a few simple questions, of course, and seeing that they don’t understand hints that all this is documented specifically to avoid annoying other people.

They are literally in this thread here.

Git gud n00b!

/s, of course.

I’ve come across this kind of response a few times on here and elsewhere, but I think it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it’s sometimes made out to be.

Absolutely this, im all in favor of making Linux more accessible but we dont need to become a Windows clone

Yeah they probably mean easy. And probably easy for me, or what I already know.

That said, one of the complaints I commonly hear about Gnome is that it’s simplified to the point of being hard to use. So again, simplification is probably not what they mean.