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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Please Don't Show the Command Line to the Uninitiated

Not long ago I had the opportunity to show off GNU/Linux to a friend. She's been a lifelong Windows user and is just your average, non-technical computer user. She'd heard of this thing called "Linux," but had never seen a Linux distro in use. So, I gladly booted up my laptop and also the desktop (we were at my house, my wife and I having one of our many cookouts) and showed her Linux Mint 7 via a live CD and also Ubuntu 8.10, which is installed on my family's desktop.

Everything was going fine as I showed her the office software and some games. It was when I went to show her selective screenshot that I erred. I opened the command line on the desktop and quickly set it up to take the shot. I could see my friend visibly shrink back as she shook her head and started to say she couldn't work with something like that. I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn't thinking, and that was the problem.

By that point I had rebooted my laptop without the live CD, so I was in Ubuntu 9.04. I opened the "Take Screenshot" app in the GUI and was able to show her there the option for "Grab a selected area." This option was not available in the Ubuntu 8.10 release. My friend relaxed and commented that this was a nice feature to have.

Less than a year ago I looked at the command line with great uncertainty, though I had the will and curiousity to learn my way around it. Now most of what I use it for comes as second nature. For non-geeks thinking about switching from Windows there is little as unnerving as the thought of having to use a command line. Some will remember back to the old DOS days and see the command line as antiquated (wrongly, of course), while others will shudder at the thought of "breaking" something.

Distros like Ubuntu typically don't require any command line familiarity. Most everything can be done in the GUI, and software can be located and installed from the Synaptic Package Manager. If you are trying to show an average computer user the strengths and benefits of Linux, don't make the mistake I did. Don't give even the appearance of going over the person's head. Make it look as easy as it really is, demonstrating everything the GUI can do to make life easier.
Posted by Adam Gonnerman at 9/23/2009 06:30:00 AM
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14 comments:

  1. As a lifelong Windows user, has she never encountered the Windows command line then?
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  2. Ste: Probably not. The average Windows user (someone who types up documents, surfs the web, plays games, does email, etc) usually has no need for the command line.

    Neither does the average person who are doing the same things in Linux.

    As a software engineer developing on a Linux machine, I only need to use the command line for the following things:

    1. Running minicom to communicate with my device via a serial port.
    2. Performing builds.
    3. Setting up my target systems file system.
    4. Using SVN for source control.

    I'll note that I don't need to use the command line to perform all of those tasks. For example, if I didn't want to use the handy features that were introduced with SVN 1.5, I could use one of the graphical SVN tools. (For some reason, RapidSVN and others have not released an update that supports these new features yet.)

    The average user isn't going to be doing the things I'm going to do. They're probably not going to be doing the things you or Adam are probably going to do either. So they never need to see the command line, let alone use it.
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  3. By the way, that crazy long name is Jarred.
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  4. I don't like this comment system, and I apologize to readers for it. Disqus doesn't work with my new template, and clearly this comment system isn't displaying names properly.

    @ste8572: I only used DOS back in the early 90s. After that, I never had to look at a command line again (as an average user). The average person using Linux for day-to-day activities shouldn't have to deal with a command line either.

    @Jarred, thanks for your comments. They are always appreciated.
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  5. Adam: You might want to check out my latest post about how I went from a command line snob to a more-or-less average computer user.

    -- Jarred
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  6. I agree. As a user who helps newbies on several forums, I find that when someone asks for help everyone starts with the commandline. Instead they would be more helpful to point them towards a graphical solution and save the commandline solution as a last gasp solution or ace up the sleeve.
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  7. If I instal Linux on my computer, I want it to boot into the command line, and then if I want a GUI I can type KDE or Gnome or whatever. But mostly I'll play with all those powerful commands, because most of my favourite programs don't run in Linux.
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  8. Good tip. I showed the CLI to a friend and it kinda freaked him out. He's now a user of GNU/Linux so it didn't cause irreparable harm, but the CLI should come down the road (or never at all). I must say that a few GNU/Linux converts from years ago who are now comfortable with the system have appreciated tips like "sudo apt-get install packagename". When you know how to use a CLI, there's nothing faster.
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  9. Why didn't you just use alt+printscreen+B it let's you select an area to screenshot.
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  10. @Jarred, I enjoyed the post you wrote. Thanks for sharing the link.

    @LinuxCanuck, when I started with Ubuntu, the help on the Ubuntu Forums pretty much always included the command line. Usually someone also mentioned the GUI solution as well. Since I was willing and able to learn the command line I was okay with it either way. Not everyone will feel like that.

    @gnusphere, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who sort of "freaked out" a friend with the command line. :-)

    @id, is that Firefox screen grab (or whatever it's called)? I've thought about adding it, but with the command line and GUI options already available, I never saw the need.

    Thanks to everyone for the feedback.
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  11. Just tell your friends that using the CLI is like 'texting' to your computer!

    I would never avoid showing the command line to someone. I decided to be someone people can look at as inspiration to stop being pansies. Having less fearful people in the planet is much more important than having more Linux users. Also, I'm not a good “newbie whisperer” anyway...
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  12. @NIC1138: Thanks for commenting. There are essentially two main schools of thought on this, so far as I can tell. There are those who think GNU/Linux doesn't have to try at all to be user friendly (either it's for geeks only, or regular folk need to get smarter) and those like myself who believe that having user friendly open source software widely available and accepted is a good thing. I don't see why both camps can't just co-exist peacefully.
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  13. So I'll throw in my 2 cents worth...

    Computer's have been "my thing" for a long time. I'm no where's near an expert, but I've been a "user" since my tiny Nebraska school got Apple IIs in 1982. The teacher who was "in charge" of them let me use them a little every day for the next 4 years. When I got to college we used a Unix system. It wasn't until sometime in the 90's that I was forced to use Windows 3.1.

    When Windows 95 came out I remember there being very long lengthy discussions on forums about whether Windows 95 would still give you access to the command line. Some people gave very long lengthy, impassioned reasons why they would not upgrade to windows 95 if they could not use the command line.

    Now, 14 years later, the average user has never used the command line. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Too many people call themselves experts when they can't fix the simplest problem with a command line function.

    I think users that are considering switching from Windows or Mac to linux should be exposed to the command line - on their current system before they switch. By showing them that it's just a part of any operating system, then making the jump to "big bad scary" Linux won't be big, or bad, or scary.

    Just my opinion.
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  14. I have friends who are computer repair tech's who will open a command prompt (in Windows) as one of the first things they do.

    Why? Because it blinds the user to everything else they do.

    Almost every user I've spoken to thinks that if someone knows how to use the command line, they must know EVERYTHING and thus are beyond reproach or questioning.
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