Various Linux desktop distros?
If so, have mercy on anyone who will be using Ubuntu Desktop for the first time. I hope they aren't afraid of using Terminal, because the internet will shout them down for wanting a GUI solution.
Love Ubuntu server, but could never get into linux desktop.
Every workplace is domain-specific, and domain specific software is simply a tool to get the job done. Windows/Linux is completely irrelevant and of absolutely zero consequence IMHO. You pick a tool that you know will get the job done, and simply use whatever OS it works on. We use a lot of scientific software at work and a 100% of it requires Windows. Yes, it could easily be re-written to work on Linux or OSX but that is not the case at this moment. If we were an accounting firm, we'd just pick Quicken or Quickbooks or whatever tool people were familiar with and use it. Or if we were an magazine or an architecture firm, or an electrical company, we'd again use whatever tools we need to get the job done. As far as the OS goes, the only thing people care about is whether their tools still work on version N+1.
For various reasons, Linux and OSX require much more involvement from the vendor to keep the software running. OSX is very user-friendly, but very hostile to developers who just want to push code out, and not be shackled with supporting the new flavor of the month API that Apple comes out with.
Windows requires very little time investment from the vendor to make it work on newer versions. Heck we're using Windows XP software (like.. binaries compiled decades ago) on Windows 10 without issue. Yes, obviously, giant caveat here - I'm not saying windows never has API breaking changes .. I'm only saying the probability is much much lower on Windows than any other platform. (discounting esoteric options that nobody is using)
People who are cheer-leading Linux or Windows or w/e, never seem to "get" this. Nobody really cares about the OS.
Also you're not really supposed to read through the entire man page for an app that you only touch once or twice, you're supposed to just search for what you need and leave.
My personal opinion is that GUIs are often less user friendly, they just look friendlier. GUIs make it easier to sell software, not to use it. Free software isn't being sold and that's why it tends to not have a GUI.
I think it’s a mixture of two factors:
1. From the perspective of the writer, it’s much easier to describe instructions via text when publishing those instructions via a predominately text-based medium such as web sites. The alternative is taking screenshots and editing those images to highlight relevant widgets. This is more time consuming and not ever site offers an easy way to upload those images (meaning you’re then sometimes having to manually upload them) nor even embed them into the discussion (eg HN). And on top of that, you still need some text to accompany the images anyway. So you might as well go with a text driven solution. And if you’re having to describe a UI in text, it’s obviously going to be easier to do so with a text based UI than a graphical UI.
This is a problem I’ve personally experienced as someone who used to write a lot of documentation for graphical UIs. It can be annoying and remember that a lot of time, people providing guides are those volunteering their time. So naturally people will opt for a lazier approach.
2. The other major factor for why I think CLI instructions are so common even on desktop Linux is because there isn’t a single agreed standard desktop environment. Not even a standard GUI toolkit, let alone DE. Arguments about whether this choice / fragmentation is a net good or bad thing aside; it makes much more sense to offer a guide that is going to be more universal (as the CLI on Linux tends to be - notwithstanding some district-specific file system hierarchies). Where as a guide with images will not only be very specific to using that unique management tool but would also be subject to any changes to the UI of that tool even if the underlying configuration files haven’t changed. So with CLI examples you end up with a guide that is not only more universal but also has greater longevity. The longevity point is something that can frustrate less technically capable Windows users who are left confused each time Microsoft decide to redesign their Control Panel applets (et al) and Linux isn’t any less subject to UI changes in its graphical frontends either. So it does make some sense to provide instructions to configuring things directly in the backend - even if it seems counterintuitive to a desktop user.
Ultimately though, I don’t see anyone who uses Linux being rude about those who use GUIs. At worst they might recommend using the CLI if someone has tried configuring something from a GUI and found themselves getting stuck because options aren’t getting applied in a way that was being expected. However there are examples when the reverse is also true. For example on HN a few weeks ago some CLI users moaning about the complexity of kemu was repeatedly (and rightfully) recommended to use a frontend instead.
Sounds like your graphics card doesn't work well with Linux. Is it Nvidia ?
Which one? There's a crapton.
PS - "evil" is not a religious term, it's actually the substitute for a religious term, which is "wickedness" (see Widipedia.)
Windows, on the other hand, not only has special characters that cannot be used but also reserved words that cannot be used as file names (eg COM). Then there’s the issue with magic file extensions and even Windows Explorer hiding extensions entirely by default.
On balance I prefer Linux’s approach. Sure it creates some problems but they’re easy to be worked around and usually only rear their head when you start using lesser polished UIs or shared file systems with Windows. Plus Linux empowers you to use those names if needed, or change them if it’s a problem. Whereas Windows has these weird hidden show stoppers - many of which were only relevant in the days of DOS but have been carried forward in every iteration of Windows since (including NT) for compatibility reasons. That causes way more problems to developers - which is my personal use case.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/nami...
Worst scenario is you’re dealing with a non-technical team but in those instances you’d keep your storage centralised and use an NT based solution (or something with first party support for AD) so you catch any Windows related bugs at save time rather than further down the road when you need to access them again. Given file names in Windows is limited by both the file system and the OS, whereas Linux is limited only by the file system, all you really need to do is catch those Windows-related errors. So running an NT-based storage array would solve that problem.
It seems fine to me. I'm running it on my laptop right now, and I don't find it significantly more annoying than Windows or MacOS, both of which I've recently used on work machines.
I'm sure there are plenty of people for whom that's not true, especially people who need niche commercial software. But a great deal of what people use is on the web these days anyhow, so I think it matters a lot less what OS Chrome is running on top of.