When I saw ads in the Windows Start menu, I switched to Ubuntu. Haven't looked back and life is good. Except that the command line command apt-get sometimes displays an ad for Ubuntu Pro...
If the computer is supposed to be a "bicycle for the mind", then shouldn't it be designed to enhance our thinking, and also to force us to "think differently"?
You have to learn how to ride a bike. It involves some scraped knees.
How does typing cryptic, badly named two-three letter commands (with no less idiotic and inconsistent flags) enhance your thinking?
The default shell and utter lack of well designed autocomplete or hints is a like a bad trip back to tape machines, punch codes and weird idiosyncracies from a bygone PDP11 era.
It's absolute piss and nobody should be dealing with it unless they want to for whatever reason.
How is apt not crypic?
It's the bona fide definition of it, every part of it.
1. It spits out mountains of cryptic gibberish when you use it.
2. It literally contains "Advanced" in it's textbook nondescript three letter abbreviation.
3. Without a fairly intimate understanding of it's hairy inner workings on how exactly dependency and package conflicts are resolved, it will fuck things up and fuck things up quite royaly. Matter of time really.
4. In fact, I'd go a step further and say that it WILL fuck things up even if you do understand that whole house of cards,
but you will atleast know how to duct tape your way out of it.
Again reminder: How exactly does this enchance "our thinking" in any shape or form exactly?
Maybe those people should take some time out of their lives to learn the basics of how computers work instead of expecting the computers to be dumbed down to their level at the expense of their usefulness to others.
Tools like the command line and exercise equipment help improve capability and personal agency. Hiding either away pushes the default toward passive consumption.
Even though I agree with you on a personal level, this kind of thinking does not lead to mainstream adoption. If there were a Linux distro that "just worked", we could have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be something that will happen in the foreseeable future.
I'd love for a company like System76 to come out with such a solution, but it is certainly an expensive, difficult endeavour.