MOTHER FATHER CHINESE DENTIST!
Situationists never die, they’re just remixed.
I get that, but Windows/Powershell isn’t case-sensitive, so you can type it all lowercase if you want (I do).
Linux on the other hand is case sensitive despite most GNU tools defaulting to all lower case. There’s definitely a bunch of case-sensitive switches in Linux CLI applications.
There has been optional case-insensitive file system support in Linux for a few years now, though.
Nah, not dickish at all. None of us can know everything. I’d rather be informed that I’m wrong than continue walking around being wrong.
True, but if your repetitive, boring task can be replaced by a well-put-together Excel spreadsheet or a few simple scripts, you’re looking at replacing yourself at your own job.
I’ve definitely seen people replaced by the work-saving scripts they wrote. Corporate doesn’t care about pesky things like “maintenance” or “security updates” or even “that command we used in the script is now deprecated.” It works well enough now, and now they consider you “redundant.”
Some folks keep doing it the repetitive boring way to keep their bosses from shitcanning them for creating something their bosses are absolutely too dimwitted to do themselves. It’s never nice to do something that saves you effort and the response is your boss shitcanning you and then saying “I made this.”
Anyone who is anyone has fancy driving gloves, cap, and goggles!
Oop can’t forget the scarf!
EDIT: I gave you an upvote here because you don’t deserve downvotes for your well stated opinion.
I have done computer work for a bunch of little old ladies, and when they couldn’t afford to upgrade to new hardware, I would put a lightweight version of Linux on their computers for them.
Only one of them really struggled with the difference, and she wasn’t against learning, she just struggled. The rest handled the transition fine and didn’t do a lot of complaining that it wasn’t what they were used to. (Probably partially because I made clear what apps were what and put shortcuts to each on their desktop, each shortcut well labeled.)
I don’t think it’s unusual for people to “get used to” how certain things work and expect that. In fact, I’d say that’s pretty normal.
But I think there’s far less fear of change from regular people than you seem to think. I see far less addiction to the “brand” of Windows than you might think.
To use the car analogy, it’s like somebody who will only drive Fords, and is terrified of the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a car made by any other manufacturer.
I mean, lots of people are scared as hell of driving a stick shift and refuse to learn… soooo yeah. I’d say that’s a closer approximation. Because a Ford and a Chevy both have steering wheels and pedals all in the same place. You add that extra pedal and some folks lose their minds. Which at least makes sense because it is different.
Those are all true, but they also don’t apply to the vast majority of computer users.
Most people don’t need the speed of using only command line, especially when the programs they’re working with aren’t deeply tied to the command line. How is the command line gonna help a regular office drone writing up a new resume? It would be far easier and quicker for them to do it in Microsoft Office instead of spending hours learning how to do it with CLI.
Absolutely you can get more fine-grained information from the CLI, but for the vast majority of users, they won’t need to.
Literally almost no regular person has even heard of SSH or will ever need a reason to use it. It’s great that it’s helpful to us, but I can think of zero reasons most people would need this knowledge for.
You can also install a lightweight version of an OS for this, without needing to just dump to the CLI. Agreed that Windows doesn’t really have a light version, but this is also not a necessity. If you’re using a system that’s old enough to get bogged down by watching a YouTube video, that’s kind of a side effect of using such old hardware. In most cases people will have modern enough hardware for this to not be an issue or something the average computer user needs to know. Because most people aren’t doing massively demanding tasks on their computers (unless they left a lot of apps open).
It’s a great flexibility to have as a developer or as a sysadmin, it’s honestly practically a requirement for both.
All of these are super valuable to people who work with computers daily. My hairdresser doesn’t give a shit and just wants a computer that functions without confusing them because they went to school for hairdressing not PC maintenance.
I get what you’re saying, but you’re acting like these things are a lot more valuable to the average user than they really are. They’re way more important for people working in the industry, not so much people who just have a computer for writing emails, drafting resumes, and browsing the web.
My partner got into programming because of learning how to mod games on her Windows PC. The idea that Windows can’t be a path to wanting to program is just a little silly.
I’m not sure, but even with jailbreaking, iOS isn’t certified UNIX. It doesn’t have a command line shell built-in that you can access easily like macOS.
So I really meant “locked down” in the sense that you’re not getting easy access to command line interface that can access system files without jailbreaking/rooting first.
I do think jailbreaking and rooting is easier than it used to be, but I don’t mess with iOS devices much.
Thanks, I think I’m on a distro where it’s not set up properly (or I broke something, heh), since that has not worked for me. I did some search and saw some working examples though, so I get it. Although I’d still say the naming conventions for the programs in Powershell makes them far easier to sort through than they are with the man -k command.
Linux is great, but obtuse, not straightforward for a beginner. The fact that something like this can be broken out of the box is sort of proof of that. Linux expects a lot more of its sysadmins.
I would say it applies a lot harder to iOS than macOS which continues to be certified UNIX and you can go hog wild on the CLI if you really want to.
One of the biggest Linux nerds I know is a mac enthusiast because it is certified UNIX.
iOS is indeed pretty locked down.
Optical Character Recognition has only been around for like fifty years. You can’t expect people to just know about it. /s
The dominance of Office is because it’s better than its competitors, and because getting businesses to change literally anything they do is near impossible. SPSS isn’t even a Microsoft product.
Also, because of the whole Open Office clusterfuck. People still download that shit not realizing it hasn’t been supported in years and haven’t heard of Libre Office. It leaves them thinking FOSS sucks because of a bad experience.
Most people who can’t afford Microsoft Office just use Google Docs anyway.
Just because I have enough admin rights to fix basic issues on other people’s computers doesn’t mean I’m allowed to just install what-the-fuck-ever on my own computer. Even as someone in IT, our workstations are locked down, even if it’s our team that is the one locking them down.
Also, if we’re gonna be talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use?
I wonder if its Linux, which has different programs for each flavor (apt get vs pacman vs yum) and whose command-set is from the 1990s where you had to use as little code as possible because of space/cpu limitations so the names for what each command does are not very descriptive…
Or is is Microsofts Powershell which has an extensive get-help command which provides a deep-dive on each and every command there is on top of all the commands being human readable in a verb-noun format that can be read by a layman and generally understood what the command is doing simply by its name. Oh and get-command so if you’re not sure what command you need, you can search for it by keyword.
Man pages can be pretty useless if you don’t already know which command you need. In Linux you don’t have as many options of learning what the command you need is, because they’re not human readable. Instead you have to search online and hope someone can clue you in to the right command/set of commands.
Linux is the better OS, but Microsoft made the right choice by making Powershell commands human readable and straight forward. If Linux was being started from scratch, this is something I would put in the pipeline: “Human readable commands in a verb-noun structure.”
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say for 80% of people, there is literally nothing they need to do on a computer that necessitates knowledge of the CLI.
Sure, they can use it if they want to. But most don’t want to, especially when they can already do the same via GUI.
Switching them to Linux won’t magically make them want to.
Getting them to stop and read what’s in front of them is one of the hardest things to do.
Personal opinion, that’s not because the errors aren’t useful, it’s because people refuse to fucking read signs. It’s not about Windows/Linux, it’s that most people can’t be arsed to pay attention to much of anything.
Source: Worked as a pool attendant with a gate. Gate had a sign with rules for the pool and instructions on how to open the gate latch. The number of people confused by the rules and the gate because they failed to look at the sign right in front of them was consistently higher than the number of people who stopped for two seconds to read the sign.
I think this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with the average human has no interest in learning something that only passively helps them.
I only know a handful of things about working on an automobile, while my father could practically take one apart and put it back together wholesale.
I can take apart a computer and put it back together wholesale, but I’m lost on an internal combustion engine.
I pay someone with expertise to handle the engine, because I’ve spent my time learning other things.
Look, unless the people you’re talking about are doing tech jobs, there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of it, just like there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of how their car works. Both a car and a computer are tools, and those tools are made to be used by people who may not know the depths of the internal workings of either.
This post feels like elitism and gatekeeping to me, as someone who thinks Windows sucks and prefers Linux. The idea that it’s the OS that is “holding people back” and not that those people might have more important things to do with their time than dedicate half their life to an operating system is absurd. If someone spends 20 years becoming a doctor, I’m not going to act like they’re a dumbass because they don’t know everything about fucking computers.
People don’t want to learn more because for most people not knowing more doesn’t impact their fucking life. Just like me not knowing more about my car doesn’t generally impact my fucking life. Because I’ve never had trouble finding someone to pay to fix it for me.
Surprise, we’re the people who are paid to fix computers for the people who are just using them as simple tools. Maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about that.
Also, last but not least, Android is a strain of Linux and it suffers from all the same issues listed above as Windows. Acting like you couldn’t pull the same bullshit in Linux if you wanted to is kind of a joke, because it’s already been done with Android.
All the ad infested bullshit we all hate about Windows 10 and 11? Blame Linux-based Android.
EDIT: Also, personal opinion, if we’re talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use. Microsoft has made great strides with Powershell being easy and accessible to people who haven’t faced a command line environment before. The things that make its command line better than Linux’s are two things, and only two things. (I hate that it’s object oriented instead of text oriented, Powershell has a lot of bad things, too)
First, human-readable commands whose names describe what the command does in a verb-noun format. This means instead of Linux with some very, very obscurely named commands that are not descriptive and you just have to sort of memorize, you can just sort of remember because the name is human readable.
Secondly, the get-command command is huge because it allows me to search these verb-noun names for the command I’m looking for. On Linux, if I don’t know the specific command, I have to search the internet, because there isn’t a built-in tool that will give me an idea of what each command does and allows me to search for them through a filter. Once you find a command you think might work, it has the get-help command which produces something similar to a Man page.
Linux has Man pages, but because there is no rhyme or reason to how any commands are named, it’s not very easy to find the command you’re looking for if you don’t already know the command. On Windows, if I know what the command does I may already have enough information to find the command using get-command instead of having to turn to Google and be like “what command do I use if I am trying to do X?”
So if we’re talking about the superiorly designed command line that’s easier for first time users. Powershell is where it’s at. Because Linux is a confusing fucking mess of 30 years of random decisions by lone programmers. Literally the only reason I know commands in Linux CLI is because I had to memorize them. I don’t do so much memorizing Powershell commands. If Linux was being built from scratch today, I’d practically demand a similar naming convention system to make it easier to understand what the fuck commands do.
There’s also a linux command line interface for at least business class cyberpower UPSs. (Not sure on consumer end.)
Worked like a charm for me on a headless machine.
Might be fun to rig the power button so if someone presses it, that song from the Transformers animated movie starts playing…
Cheers, mate! I don’t use Apple stuff very often, but I do strongly respect their engineering and the fact that they’re certified UNIX for macOS.
There just needs to be far less gatekeeping and acting like one solution fits all in the PC community in general.