Return vs. Enter

[Joel Goguen]

On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 09:48 +0000, Dougie Richardson wrote: 
> Why?
> 
> This is often quoted about our documentation - Linux in general is
> quite command line oriented and configuration is mostly still text file
> based.
> 
> I don't see why shielding new users from it is as productive as getting
> them used to it from the beginning.
How often does a Windows user have to open the command interpreter to
get something done?  Not often, and everything I can think of can be
done using a GUI.  My line of thinking is that to fix bug 1, Ubuntu
needs to be just as good as Windows in every way.  My favourite example
is dual-monitor setup on a laptop. And yes, I know it's not a bug with
Ubuntu, but to the average user that's exactly what it looks like.  With
Windows, I can really quickly and easily enable dual-monitor mode,
complete with drag-and-drop orientation of the screens and telling
Windows to treat my laptop monitor as the primary.  With Ubuntu, my
experiences weren't so easy.  Prior to Intrepid I had to edit xorg.conf,
and with Intrepid I had to play around with the GUIs, found the nVidia
GUI, played with that, and eventually gave up trying to make my laptop
monitor the primary.  I still can't get Ubuntu to dynamically switch
from single-monitor to dual-monitor.  I also still can't recommend
Ubuntu to users who need to switch like this frequently.  The simplest
thing I ever found was to define two ServerLayout sections and have a
script that would restart X with the proper flag to use one section or
the other.

No, I don't believe in hiding the CLI from users, but I do believe in
providing them with a GUI alternative.  IMO, GUI methods should be in
the desktop guides as much as possible, with CLI methods in the server
guide.  Maybe the desktop guide points at the server guide for an
alternate method, but I've found that the CLI is daunting to new users.
If I'm trying to convince a non-technical user who gets uncomfortable
typing "ipconfig" into the Windows command interpreter to change to
Ubuntu, the number of areas where the command-line is still used in the
docs instead of the GUI will turn (has turned) users off before they
even got to something where it's still required. 

This is fairly off the topic though.  Even more off-topic, if anyone
here does have a solution to this dual-monitor problem I'd love to hear
it and give it a try cause it's been bugging me for years :)

-- 
Joel Goguen
Bug-free code is a myth.
Registered Linux User #391952
Registered Ubuntu User #15951
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