[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.