Such is the state of things in the Linux world that sometimes the way to get the most out of the OS requires plonking down into a terminal.
It took me a long time to warm up to Linux because I didn't understand how things worked underneath the pretty GUI. Coming from the DOS/Windows world I just didn't feel comfortable having the command line there and not knowing how to use it.
On one hand you have Linux distributions that largly allow you to run the system without ever needing to use the command line. This is good for helping people get on the Linux boat, and I know it helped me in the beginning.
On the other hand you have people who enjoy the command line. I can truely understand this now because I've been playing with a headless Linux box for the past few months and my only interface to it is a textmode terminal over SSH. Learning to do everything through the command line has really helped me appreciate *nix systems more and I've learned more about how Linux works than I ever did playing with the GUI (or even building Gentoo.)
Is it the best way to learn? No. Worth learning? Absolutely. Infact, I think it lends an understanding of the system that goes beyond what you can get from the GUI alone.
Every interface is a layer of abstraction between the system and the user. The GUI is a much friendler abstraction and more intuitive, while the command line is a much more intimate abstraction of the system. Each one has it's place.
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Such is the state of things in the Linux world that sometimes the way to get the most out of the OS requires plonking down into a terminal.
It took me a long time to warm up to Linux because I didn't understand how things worked underneath the pretty GUI. Coming from the DOS/Windows world I just didn't feel comfortable having the command line there and not knowing how to use it.
On one hand you have Linux distributions that largly allow you to run the system without ever needing to use the command line. This is good for helping people get on the Linux boat, and I know it helped me in the beginning.
On the other hand you have people who enjoy the command line. I can truely understand this now because I've been playing with a headless Linux box for the past few months and my only interface to it is a textmode terminal over SSH. Learning to do everything through the command line has really helped me appreciate *nix systems more and I've learned more about how Linux works than I ever did playing with the GUI (or even building Gentoo.)
Is it the best way to learn? No. Worth learning? Absolutely. Infact, I think it lends an understanding of the system that goes beyond what you can get from the GUI alone.
Every interface is a layer of abstraction between the system and the user. The GUI is a much friendler abstraction and more intuitive, while the command line is a much more intimate abstraction of the system. Each one has it's place.