Thread: Windows Versus Linux : Whats the "Reality"

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

I think Linux just suffers from poor documentation, tbh.

On the contrary, Linux has excellent documentation. It's extensive and detailed, but it tends to be geared toward people who are already familiar with the system.

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

I think one of the biggest problems with learning Linux is that no distro comes with a "Here's useful things to get you started" guide.

Isn't there, though?

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

Yes, Linux works best with the command line. No, this isn't a bad thing.

Well not always. I think there are some tasks that are nicer and faster to do with a GUI and mouse. Sometimes said tasks are even smoother to perform than on Windows, but sometimes the other way around, too.

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

It's most useful to the user to tell them about commands like : mv, mkdir, cp, rm and how these function like their GUI counterparts.

But there's a lot of other useful features not mentioned. For example, tab-to-autocomplete, up/down arrow keys to cycle through command history.

Back when I was a Guh New Slash Linux n00b, I didn't see much usefulness in the CLI, honestly. Like Elysia I wondered why I should bother with "cd" "ls" and "mv", when I could just easily do it in Dolphin. But, once I saw how efficiently you could perform otherwise excruciating tasks with the magic of pipes and grep/sed/awk/ack/etc. The closest thing Windows has to this near-utopia is PowerShell, which feels like it was literally made with the intention of influencing it's users to commit suicide (before you complain about my misuse of the word "literally", I dare you to try it out ), and Cygwin, which is messy, and you might as well be using a *nix at that point!

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

Another huge issue where a GUI would be useful is in configuring .bashrc files. Doing this by hand is a giant pain the butt and can be quite confusing.

How so? The reason it (probably) doesn't exist is because those "configuration" files are actually init scripts. Full fledged scripts.

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

I think Linux just suffers from poor documentation, tbh.

I agree with Elkvis, but I don't strictly disagree with you either. Documentation for any OS or software tends to be lacking once you wander from the wide path. There are some gems though, RFCs and the like are usually fantastic when you need them.