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OMGUbuntu: 'Why Use Linux?' Answered in 3 Short Words (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Linux-focused blog OMGUbuntu's Joey-Elijah Sneddon shared a post today in which he is trying to explain why people should Linux. He stumbled upon the question when he typed "Why use" and Google suggested Linux as one of the most frequent questions. From the article: The question posed is not one that I sincerely ask myself very often. The answer has, over the years, become complicated. It's grown into a bloated ball of elastic bands, each reason stretched around and now reliant on another. But I wanted to answer. Helpfully, my brain began to spit out all the predictable nouns: "Why use Linux? Because of security! Because of control! Because of privacy, community, and a general sense of purpose! Because it's fast! Because it's virus free! Because I'm dang-well used to it now! Because, heck, I can shape it to look like pretty much anything I want it to using themes and widgets and CSS and extensions and blingy little desktop trinkets!"
Nuff said.
No. Vendor. Lockin.
It's not Windows.
It's not spyware.
It's not Microsoft.
It respects you.
It's your computer!
Try it today!
You haven't worked with normal users much, have you? It can be a shock how little most people understand their computers and how they work. They simply memorize the actions needed to accomplish specific tasks, and that's good enough for them. The big blue E icon on their desktop means "the internet", until it drives someone they know who's a bit more knowledgeable insane, and they replace it with a Fox or round primary icon, and then THAT becomes "the internet" for them.
I'll put it bluntly. No, normal users should stay away from the terminal, nor should they *need* to use it for daily operations. If they're interested in learning how to work at a command prompt, that just means they're probably on the verge of becoming a power user. That's not a bad thing, of course, but it's not what most people want to spend their time doing.
Figuring out how to use a terminal requires a non-trivial learning curve. That's because there's no intuitive method of command / feature discovery, unlike with a menu, toolbars with tooltips, and dialog boxes that show you all the options in a visual, hierarchical format. There's a reason GUIs are ubiquitous in nearly all computing platforms today, with the possible exception of headless servers, embedded systems, and other specialized systems.
I'm a programmer, so yes, I'm comfortable with various shells, but I think some people seem to overly fetishize it, like it's a badge of their geekdom or a symbol of their arcane power over a computer. The command line is just power and flexibility at the expense of user friendliness. Once learned, it's a very handy tool in your arsenal, and can be more efficient for some type of operations. Don't pretend it's anything but that, or you're just fooling yourself.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.