[oftenwrong]

The last thing an inexperienced terminal user should be doing is installing a bunch of software without understanding how it fits together, how it is used, or how it is actually configured. If you want to understand your terminal stack, build it; don't have it built for you.

The better approach is to start from a basic setup. For example, with vim, don't use vim-sensible right off the bat. Instead, just use vim. If a need arises, research what you can set up to address it. If you are curious about what is out there, read through the source of plugins like vim-sensible, taking each option, reading the docs for it, learning a bit of vimscript as needed, and only adding stuff to your vimrc if you really understand what you are adding. Don't add a bunch of things all at once. Do one at a time, and try it out for a while.

[h1d]

You sound like average people should not start from Windows but from Slackware, so they will have better understanding of what's comprised of their machine.

It's a good start to give people the sense of what can be achieved by customization. If they don't like it from there they can certainly learn and tune to their needs, which should give more motivation than getting stuck googling for hours without any results from a bare terminal.

[oftenwrong]

You make a good point - starting from scratch requires too much effort to see any reward, but I think a simple, relatively stripped-down system is easier to understand and easier to build upon. A batteries-included setup can be an impediment to learning. When something is working, there is less motivation to learn how it works. After all, how many Windows users ever take a look behind the curtain?

From my perspective, a stripped-down system is like a set of wood blocks, and a batteries-included system is like a doll house.

If you give a child a doll house, the child could reverse-engineer the doll house to figure out how it was built, and to customise it, but the child will probably just play with it as-is, and focus on setting up doll furniture and re-enacting domestic life.

If you give the child wood blocks, the child will have to build a house for the dolls. The child will have to figure out how to make it structurally sound, how to make a gabled roof, how to make holes in a wall for windows, how to make a porch, etc. Of course, if they have never seen a doll house, it may never occur to them to build one, but they will probably build something. Later the child may progress to customising blocks, or making new blocks, or even full carpentry, building upon the earlier skill-set.

But, like you say, if you just give the child a felled tree, it is unlikely that they will figure out how to turn it into blocks, or into a doll house, or anything really. It's too big of a leap for them to make.

[pasabagi]

My experience with vim is that if you start with the default, it's probably too frustrating. Most plugins are essentially training-wheels: less efficient, but more intuitive means of carrying out basic tasks. For instance, 'easymotion' is far simpler than learning all the text objects and how to move around them, but it also requires another keypress and is less effective.

I think a lot of batteries-included stuff, at its best, is like that - stuff that you don't fundamentally need, but that puts a smoother corner on the rough and unshapely form of something that cares more about power than intuitiveness.

[RhysU]

I have been coasting for nearly two decades from experience from running Slack.

[Fnoord]

Good point, there's something to be said to try software in its default settings the way the developer(s) intended. However, there's also something to be said for optimisation. If you fire up a game, do you first configure the graphics and keybinds or do you go right away? Its up to you, the user.

[Fnoord]

I like your approach, but something can be said about an all-in-one solution as well.

Additionally, the website mentions:

> Install

> To install, run this command in your terminal:

> sh -c "$(wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aaronkjones/noobs-term/mas... -O -)"

> If you do not have wget use,

> sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aaronkjones/noobs-term/mas...

I smirked at the "if you do not have wget" cause whilst I was reading it I expected an alternative to executing the shell script, but no. What if I don't want to download a .sh script and execute it? Why teach "noobs" this behaviour?

[zimbatm]

Learning everything from scratch is a big ask not everybody is willing to jump for. Some users might feel intimidated by the amount of things to learn before they can become productive.

If that gets new users in, make them comfortable until they outgrow the setup then it's a good thing.

[aaronkjones]

My thinking is it's easier to start out with a solid foundation that I think the "sensible" and oh-my-zsh projects give you.

Take tmux-sensible for example, https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible. Each configuration item is explained in detail.

So the goal here is to give new users a starting point that is well documented and explained, instead of finding joeschmo's dotfiles that has "set -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l $SHELL"" with no explanation on what that does.

[kungtotte]

I think vim-sensible is much less of an issue than oh-my-zsh.

Sensible isn't a whole mess of scripts and settings. It's 100 lines of highly readable vim settings and at the top there's a comment instructing people to use :help to learn more about what everything does.

I guess a case could be made for adding descriptive comments to make it more approachable for beginners, but it's not some black box of magic.