5 ms·

I'm not sure how big the subset of people that use unix systems and are ignorant of the command line is. Most of your GUI users are on Windows, and unix shell

I'm not sure how big the subset of people that use unix systems and are ignorant of the command line is. Most of your GUI users are on Windows, and unix shell commands mostly do not work or are aliased to other commands that don't work exactly the same way as they do in GNUland.

analog31 6y ago
Oddly enough, even in the Windows world, I'm seeing more and more instructions for things like installing a software app or component, as a list of commands that you enter into the shell or the taskbar search box. Installation instructions for Windows are horrifying -- page after page of pictures, with circles and arrows and a paragraph... And when the OS is updated, all of the dialog layouts and icons change just a bit and you're lost. Just gimme some shell commands.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Even worse is the more recent trend of Youtube videos showing you how to do something on your computer. "OK, GUYS! We're going to start at the desktop. Now click on Start..." Watch someone moving their mouse around for 20 minutes, making mistakes, backtracking, hovering over things so they remember what to do, then finally achieving what the tutorial was about. Ending the video with "Don't forget to like and subscribe!" This could have been a single command line command.
  - II2II 6y ago
    > This could have been a single command line command. ... that you could have copied and pasted. When it comes to technical support on Linux, few people seem to realize how much easier it is to provide support with a handful of shell commands. Describing how to do things in a GUI usually involves awkward descriptions, multiple screenshots, or a video demonstration. Actual support involves doing all of that in both directions (or having someone else log into your machine to do that for you). With a terminal, you're just copying and pasting text.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Is it still that bad? I haven’t used Windows since 7, I just assumed at some point in the zillion pivots since then MS would take a cue from macOS and make installing apps as easy as a click or drag-dropping a single “file”. It couldn’t possibly be a huge design or engineering feat to copy. Do people who use Windows just actually prefer installers?
  - gsich 6y ago
    no. Windows is surprisingly consistent.
  - analog31 6y ago
    Like the other poster says, it has gotten vastly more consistent, but that consistency depends on the software author or vendor keeping up to date. As you drill down into the depths of niche or technical software (aka "the good stuff"), there are more surprises in store.
josephg 6y ago
> I'm not sure how big the subset of people that use unix systems and are ignorant of the command line is. Probably way more than you'd think. Most people get thrown into the unix shell at some point without learning it properly. And its easy to accidentally miss a lot of fundamentals due to imposter syndrome + the terminal's terrible discoverability. I made a simple build system at a company I worked at a few years ago to build production docker images. It was a little nodejs process which ran docker build in a subprocess, and streamed stdout / stderr to the browser. So you could kick off a build with a few clicks of the mouse and you could see it build + deploy. The whole thing was just a couple hundred lines of code that I whipped it up in a day or two. Some of my coworkers were way more impressed than I expected. They're great senior web programmers, but apparently they just never learned unix properly and didn't realise how easy it is to do stuff like that.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Presumably you’re intentionally excluding phones and tablets (nearly all of which run some Unix or GNU variant), but it seems exceedingly odd to overlook macOS. While I don’t have hard numbers on Mac CLI usage/familiarity, I would assume it’s proportionally higher than Windows (lots of tech adoption especially since Macs switched to Intel) but lower than Linux (lots of consumer adoption, similar timeframe).
- thrower123 6y ago
  I do forget that Chromebooks are a thing.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    That too. But that’s also an odd response in context?

analog31 6y ago

Oddly enough, even in the Windows world, I'm seeing more and more instructions for things like installing a software app or component, as a list of commands that you enter into the shell or the taskbar search box. Installation instructions for Windows are horrifying -- page after page of pictures, with circles and arrows and a paragraph... And when the OS is updated, all of the dialog layouts and icons change just a bit and you're lost. Just gimme some shell commands.

ryandrake 6y ago
Even worse is the more recent trend of Youtube videos showing you how to do something on your computer. "OK, GUYS! We're going to start at the desktop. Now click on Start..." Watch someone moving their mouse around for 20 minutes, making mistakes, backtracking, hovering over things so they remember what to do, then finally achieving what the tutorial was about. Ending the video with "Don't forget to like and subscribe!" This could have been a single command line command.
- II2II 6y ago
  > This could have been a single command line command. ... that you could have copied and pasted. When it comes to technical support on Linux, few people seem to realize how much easier it is to provide support with a handful of shell commands. Describing how to do things in a GUI usually involves awkward descriptions, multiple screenshots, or a video demonstration. Actual support involves doing all of that in both directions (or having someone else log into your machine to do that for you). With a terminal, you're just copying and pasting text.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Is it still that bad? I haven’t used Windows since 7, I just assumed at some point in the zillion pivots since then MS would take a cue from macOS and make installing apps as easy as a click or drag-dropping a single “file”. It couldn’t possibly be a huge design or engineering feat to copy. Do people who use Windows just actually prefer installers?
- gsich 6y ago
  no. Windows is surprisingly consistent.
- analog31 6y ago
  Like the other poster says, it has gotten vastly more consistent, but that consistency depends on the software author or vendor keeping up to date. As you drill down into the depths of niche or technical software (aka "the good stuff"), there are more surprises in store.

josephg 6y ago

> I'm not sure how big the subset of people that use unix systems and are ignorant of the command line is. Probably way more than you'd think. Most people get thrown into the unix shell at some point without learning it properly. And its easy to accidentally miss a lot of fundamentals due to imposter syndrome + the terminal's terrible discoverability. I made a simple build system at a company I worked at a few years ago to build production docker images. It was a little nodejs process which ran docker build in a subprocess, and streamed stdout / stderr to the browser. So you could kick off a build with a few clicks of the mouse and you could see it build + deploy. The whole thing was just a couple hundred lines of code that I whipped it up in a day or two. Some of my coworkers were way more impressed than I expected. They're great senior web programmers, but apparently they just never learned unix properly and didn't realise how easy it is to do stuff like that.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

Presumably you’re intentionally excluding phones and tablets (nearly all of which run some Unix or GNU variant), but it seems exceedingly odd to overlook macOS. While I don’t have hard numbers on Mac CLI usage/familiarity, I would assume it’s proportionally higher than Windows (lots of tech adoption especially since Macs switched to Intel) but lower than Linux (lots of consumer adoption, similar timeframe).

thrower123 6y ago
I do forget that Chromebooks are a thing.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  That too. But that’s also an odd response in context?