Lemmy account of natanox@chaos.social

  • 27 Posts
  • 490 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 7th, 2024

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  • In the long run it more often than not is better to show them how to help themselves though. Let’s say they use Mint and want to install something they saw from ElementaryOS, so a new Flatpak repo: Of course in this moment I’d be done faster with their request for help sending them two commands to just paste, but showing them where they can add the new repo themselves and how this will make all the new apps pop up in their Software Store doesn’t just make them more independent and reassure them in trying things themselves, but will make it less likely for them to constantly ask you for help again.

    And it makes more people stick with Linux, that’s always good.


  • That’s just wrong, the correct commands are always different. E.g. for journalctl to keep following the newest entries you need -f, while in dmesg you need -w for the very same feature. That’s not any more “the same” than it is the “same” to move your mouse around a differently organized GUI.

    Writing in the CLI is comparable with moving the mouse, and remembering the appropriate commands of the specific tool comparable to know where to click on. However a proper GUI is immediately visible to be interacted with (and not abstract like most CLI arguments) and will convey function through form, while the function in the CLI is hidden behind help texts and man pages.

    I do like working with the CLI a lot, but what you said was simply wrong.







  • I know what you mean, just beware: in lots of cases it’s not as universal (as in distro-independent) as some still think it is.

    For people who want to get things done with their PC that isn’t inherently IT-related (like, doing office work or music production or anything else) and just need to do the occasional light sysadmin thing like setting up new drives to be auto-mounted somewhere, pointing to GUI tools is just so much better. And in many cases it is also safer (making your system fail on boot with a small typo in the fstab is painfully easy).