[semi-extrinsic]

> plug the wires, and it works immediately

How does it work immediately? How does it know of I want to clone or extend the display? If I extend, do I want the same resolution on both screens, or different? You'll have to set that somehow, and whether it's a GUI or a CLI tool doesn't matter.

Forgetting the invocations aren't really an issue anymore either, my shell (zsh) has autocompletion of xrandr outputs, modes and resolutions.

[tracker1]

With OSX/Windows, it tends to mirror by default and/or present a window asking you what you want to do.

Requiring a CLI to connect a monitor/projector is a UX fail.

[lorenzhs]

There are plenty of tools to automate that. arandr is a very simple and powerful tool to arrange monitors with a GUI. Gnome has its own, much simpler, monitor configuration dialog. My system defaults to extending to the right, by the way, because that's generally what I want when connecting a projector.

None of this is new, and the whole point of this discussion is that Linux desktops are much better than they were ten years ago. It is that old state that many folks have in mind when criticising Linux distros' usability. It's just not a very interesting discussion to have.

[KirinDave]

And the thing I think you're hearing is that "progress" should not equate to "good enough." Doing a sensible and even helpful thing by default is part of user friendliness.