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scotty79

I don't understand this question. Please elaborate.

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Isn't that what the command "apropos" does?

Not if I can't do

apropos switch desktop to dark mode

and

aprops set dns to 8.8.8.8

I know this is not what you want, but actually:

   $ apropos dns
   [...]
   resolvectl (1)       - Resolve domain names, IPV4 and IPv6 addresses, DNS resource records, and services; introspect and reconfigure the DNS resolver
   [...]
   $ man resolvectl
   [...]
     dns [LINK [SERVER...]], domain [LINK [DOMAIN...]], default-route [LINK [BOOL...]], llmnr [LINK [MODE]], mdns [LINK [MODE]], dnssec [LINK [MODE]], dnsovertls [LINK [MODE]], nta [LINK [DOMAIN...]]

           Get/set per-interface DNS configuration. These commands may be used
           to configure various DNS settings for network interfaces. These
           commands may be used to inform systemd-resolved or systemd-networkd
           about per-interface DNS configuration determined through external
           means. The dns command expects IPv4 or IPv6 address specifications
           of DNS servers to use. Each address can optionally take a port
           number separated with ":", a network interface name or index
           separated with "%", and a Server Name Indication (SNI) separated
           with "#". When IPv6 address is specified with a port number, then
           the address must be in the square brackets. That is, the acceptable
           full formats are "111.222.333.444:9953%ifname#example.com" for IPv4
           and "[1111:2222::3333]:9953%ifname#example.com" for IPv6. The
           domain command expects valid DNS domains, possibly prefixed with
           "~", and configures a per-interface search or route-only domain.
           The default-route command expects a boolean parameter, and
           configures whether the link may be used as default route for DNS
           lookups, i.e. if it is suitable for lookups on domains no other
           link explicitly is configured for. The llmnr, mdns, dnssec and
           dnsovertls commands may be used to configure the per-interface
           LLMNR, MulticastDNS, DNSSEC and DNSOverTLS settings. Finally, nta
           command may be used to configure additional per-interface DNSSEC
           NTA domains.

           Commands dns, domain and nta can take a single empty string
           argument to clear their respective value lists.

           For details about these settings, their possible values and their
           effect, see the corresponding settings in systemd.network(5).


   [...]

Not too bad in my opinion. (I didn't actually knew before how to set the DNS server, never needed to do it.)

Quite uselsess, it doesn't tell me which file to edit, what to put in there, nor what command to invoke with what arguments.

People can do and do better with googling. Proportion of people who found the answer to that question through apropos to people who found that answer googling is probably less than a million to one.

The man pages certainly tell you how to set your DNS to 8.8.8.8. You just have to do a bit more reading than what the agent would give you. But there's a side benefit to that extra reading, you learn how to do more things. Sometimes that's useful, sometimes it isn't. But you don't know if it is useful or not until later, you can only find out in time

Be on GNOME

Press super and type “dark mode”

What happens?

I’m not sure I understand the desire to control computers with conversational language. Computers are a collection of on off switches. I personally would much prefer being able to control exactly which on off switches to switch, instead of just telling the black box to do something and for it to make no mistakes. It just doesn’t strike me as a good idea to give the incomprehensible matrix weight the ability to make decisions about what to do on my machine. There’s just far too much ambiguity for my comfort here.

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