this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
1079 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
76945 readers
3476 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Eh, I think it's just about ease of use and discovery. When you open a terminal, it just shows a blinking cursor. If you've never used the terminal before, how do you know what to type?
In a graphical desktop environment, you see icons, menus, etc. If you open a GUI application, you usually see buttons and things to click, and maybe even some guidance on how to use the app.
A lot of people just want to use their computer without too much of a learning curve. Most people are not powerusers.
Start pushing buttons. Start typing things, try pressing tab variously. Look up guides, introductions, help. Yes it's not like the discovery of gui where you get to discover whatever the developer of the gui made available to you. It's a deeper kind of discovery of what more you can do with command line that you cant do with gui. The gui lets you point at pictures provided. The command line lets you string commands together, like stringing words together to form sentences, to have a more nuanced conversation of your own making. So yes, there's a different initial hurdle and learning curve. Well worth getting over through. Understandable how this is missed by those coming from where the command line is really limited and the gui tries to be all (even if that all is limited). The good stuff's over the hurdle, and keeps getting better as you progress along the learning curve, deep into the wide delta of potential, where we each become each others teachers.
Sure, but my point is: I don't think I've ever seen a terminal present those instructions when you open it. Unless it's immediately shown in some MOTD or something, the average user isn't going to take the time to figure it out if they don't have to.
If my grandmother wanted to draft a letter on her computer, she'd use something that looks more like Notepad and less like Vi.
Yep, for sure there's room for improvement here. Perhaps someone can provide some configurations, pull requests, forks, or even entirely new shells, that do prioritise upfront documentation for new users who wont go out of their way to find the documentation to learn.