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Comment by htk | Hacker News Reader

Even a review on Linux can't help but mention some cryptic terminal command.

In a famous article, Joel Spolsky wrote about Linux and Windows in terms of cultures around, spefically, a culture of programmers vs. end users.

Withing the context of Linux so, it's perfectly adequate to sprinkle some technicisms.

The thing is, Linux has advanced a lot in the last decade, and it's even perfectly usable by the hmm "less receptive" users, so to see "cryptic terminal commands" is a good thing, because it shows that Linux has managed to be (so to speak) the best of both worlds, that is, the world of the casual users and the world of the advanced ones.

I hope you can sleep this night not worrying about the "Terminal" monster below your bed.

When I started programming, the computer didn't have a GUI, so I'm fairly comfortable with Terminal.

I also hear, year after year, how Linux is going to finally reach out of nerddom, and it always fails to do that, and it always will if the community keeps this mindset "you don't need to be scared of a little terminal, you will LEARN more about your computer".

Well, only us geeks want to learn more about our computers, others just want to do stuff, and they are right, that's why iPads are everywhere.

The old saying is still going strong: "Linux is only free is your time is worth nothing"

I disagree. I recently installed Linux Mint 16 (with Cinnamon as the DE) on my laptop and the experience was basically hiccup free:

- Install was smooth (since I was installing on a separate drive, no fiddling with manual partitioning etc.)

- Everything that a typical user wants worked post install without any extra steps - Music/Videos/Wifi connectivity/Internet/Hibernate/Suspend etc. all worked

I didn't have to launch the terminal for any of the above.

Because Windows doesn't have cryptic regedit paths.

I can't ever remember reading a review of a new Windows version that included registry paths.

I wish people would think of the shell as just another form of UI that happens to run on text rather than graphical widgets.

and I wish linux wasn't a horribly buggy hard to use desktop OS.

Fortunately my macbook combines a good desktop environment with what I need for work. I just my windows PC for my games and such. Linux can sit on my server where it belongs.

Yeah, OS X is great.

What, fonts looks like shit when you attach your non-retina external monitor to your shiny retina MacBook Pro? No biggie, just open Terminal or iTerm and type:

    defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3

You're upset because in Mavericks sleep and display off times are lumped together? The solution is just a few keystrokes away:

    sudo pmset -b sleep 10  # sleep after 10 minutes on battery; use System Preferences to set display off times

Want to see Library folder in Finder?

    chflags nohidden /Users/[username]/Library/

Don't see the point of Dashboard? Terminal-fu to the rescue:

    defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES 
    killall Dock

... etc, etc. Don't get me wrong, my home server runs on Debian, and boy it was an adventure sometimes to install non-blessed packages (read: something less than two years old), but unless you're using an appliance (read: iOS device), every OS have it's share of weird incarnations if you want to do anything, well, advanced.

> and I wish linux wasn't a horribly buggy hard to use desktop OS.

Compared to the state of "Linux on the desktop" when I first used it, it is absolutely amazing -- no more manually configuring my NICs using jumpers, no more writing a PPP config file (and chat script!) by hand (from scratch), no more running out to buy a different video card because mine isn't supported.

It's not perfect by any means but it is certainly usable by a majority of the population.

Just because it's hard for you, doesn't mean it's hard for everyone. Lots of people seem to be using it just fine.

The world has changed. Every time someone wants automatic updates on Windows without forced 15 min restarts, they're told to open `gedit.msc`. It's funny. We all expected that the world would go the other way with less CLI work in Linux, but never considered that a common thing that nearly everyone complains about would require more CLI work in Windows.

Funny.

Not sure what we'd be comparing this to. I guess the way you'd do the same thing in Windows, if you had to, would be to use regedit, which I think is super cryptic. The terminal is only cryptic to those unfamiliar with it. The more you use it the more you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Except for that re-implementation of the registry in Gnome where ´rm .config/sthg´ doesn't work anymore but you have to:

    gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.rhythmbox
    gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.rhythmbox.display-page-tree
    gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.rhythmbox.library
    (...)

http://askubuntu.com/questions/7979/how-can-i-reset-all-rhyt...

(had to do that today to unbork an ipod which rhythmbox wouln't play along anymore)

Try dconf-editor, each of these settings have detailed descriptions unlike disasteredit.

"apt-get install" is hardly cryptic.

The scopes disabling command was beyond cryptic in the other hand

It was. He should have mentioned you can go to settings > security & privacy > search and disable the dash internet search results. Very easy through the GUI.

If you are customizing the UI then you are already in "power user" territory. The only alternative would be to go the KDE route and use hundreds of checkboxes and select boxes for changing every little thing in the UI.

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