My brother is 12 and just like other people of his age he can’t use a computer properly because he is only familiar with mobile devices and dumbed-down computers
I recently dual-booted Fedora KDE and Windows 10 on his laptop. Showed him Discovery and told him, “This is the app store. Everything you’ll ever need is here, and if you can’t find something just tell me and I’ll add it there”. I also set up bottles telling him “Your non-steam games are here”. He installed Steam and other apps himself
I guess he is a better Linux user than Linus Sebastian since he installed Steam without breaking his OS…
The tech support questions and stuff like “Can you install this for me?” or “Is this a virus?” dropped to zero. He only asks me things like “What was the name of PowerPoint for Linux” once in a while
After a week I have hardly ever seen my brother use Windows. He says Fedora is “like iOS” and he absolutely loved it
I use Arch and he keeps telling me “Why are you doing that nerdy terminal stuff just use Fedora”. He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
You still need similar memorisation when using a GUI.
You don’t give the GUI process a second thought as you’re used to the steps, similar to those using the terminal.
For example, in Windows to create a new text file, save it, and copy it.
You need to know the name of the application (notepad), how to find and open it from the Start menu, the steps within notepad to save the file and the path to save to (file -> save -> navigate to path), the name of the file explorer (Windows Explorer) and how to find and open it, how to navigate to the file, the steps to copying a file (right click copy or ctrl-c), and pasting the file (right click paste or ctrl-v).
On the terminal, it’s a case of remembering commands/switches:
vim document.txt
:wq (write quit)
cp document.txt documentnew.txt
rm document.txt
Both processes require memorisation of specific sequence of steps which overtime you’ll become accustom to and not have to actively think about when repeating a similar process.
My preference is the terminal as it is quicker and simpler in most instances and without the clutter of everything that comes with a GUI application.
In a GUI, your options are human-readable and all presented to you. In a terminal, you have to know the names of the programs/commands. It’s not a big deal for something like Notepad or vim, but it gets more complicated when you don’t know the name of what you’re looking for. It’s easier to remember the which program you need when you have a list and icons. You can do all the same things, but a GUI is much more intuitive for the majority of people.
Congratulations, you now opened Notepad / Random open source text editor.
The above pattern works for almost every program. There is no need to memorise the ridiculously inconsistent nuances of the 4 different commands you specified.
9/10 times I personally prefer GUI over terminal for efficiency. With three buttons I already have a text editor open. At this point, you’ve just started typing the letter ‘v’ in your first step.
You’re misunderstanding the point of my comment.
It wasn’t competition of how quick it is to complete that specific task in the terminal vs GUI.
That way suites you as you’ve learned it, you’re used to it, and is part of your workflow. It’s efficient for you, that’s great. The terminal suites me as I live and breath it, in and outside of work.
There may be things I do on the command line that would be quicker using a GUI, yet I do it anyway as it is simpler.