;tldr Beginning to use a new OS, even using a distro as friendly as Mint, is harder than the overall community says it is. The second there is a problem expect hours of consuming, likely outdated, information. That said I’m happy I switched.
I’m not a programmer. If you are someone who is unfamiliar with GNU/Linux you probably aren’t either. Good news: a week after you start using Linux you’ll feel like one! Here are some critical things I eventually learned while installing Ubuntu/Mint:
You should expect to use the terminal . Period. Something about your particular hardware or software setup may require special tweaks or install that requires typing. Anyone who even hints this isn’t the case is at best deluded. I know this is a deal-breaker for many people but I’d rather not waste your time.
Locations and commands are case-sensitive . -h means help -H Human-readable (or is it the other way around? More typing yay!). It’s in /etc/ X 11, not /etc/x11 (something almost impossible to see the difference of on a blurry 1080i resolution not being properly displayed).
While the basic user storage locations mimic what you are used to, the underlying system organization is completely impossible to navigate. Pertinent files can be scattered over several locations for whatever reason so don’t even bother trying to figure out a pattern and just follow guides. That said,
Guides helping you to navigate this jumbled mess are possibly outdated so check their dates or you may end up following directions and quite possibly break your installation when you add/remove/alter a file that used to be important but has been deprecated or relocated and now redundant. Speaking of which,
It is possible/probable your distro is effectively a skin of another older distro , so you should search the underlying distro directions too in case there aren’t any for the ‘skin’ you’re using.
All said and done, I am very happy to say I now have my Mint OS on a portable USB keychain that I can use on any PC (assuming TPM permission). The actual OS is pleasantly unobtrusive, nimble, and supports 90% of what I want to do with it. Critical failings seem to be completely relegated to proprietary software (for me, 1080i support was abandoned by all the graphics card developers years ago and I’m unable to either find older working drivers like I can in Win10, or find/figure out the tweaking needed to force the issue). Check all your mission critical programs to see if they are Linux compatible , or ‘simply’ learn to use the open-source competitor if they aren’t.
I’m on opensuse aeon and for general usage, I do not have to use the shell. Installation and updates happen in “software”. Settings, extensions all have their own app. Providing a case where you have to use the shell would be good to strengthen your position. Maybe it’s a mint thing and not a problem of linux in general.
Since there is no example I can’t know if you’re right. I know there can be “weird” stuff sometimes to enable things via the shell but usually you follow a tutorial and it means copy pasting some lines. Only one time. That shouldn’t count as “using the shell”
It’s certainly possible to never open terminal but there are plenty of programs that need to be built via terminal because they have no app image/flatpak nor prebuilt binaries for your distribution
Also why isn’t copy pasting stuff into terminal considering using it? Sure you followed a tutorial but you needed to use it or you can’t do what you want right?
Probably there is that software. But for the vast majority of people there is everything they ever need.
Yes, of course it is using the terminal. But If you don’t start using linux because you think you have to use the terminal / some hacker stuff, and thus are afraid of using linux because you don’t know that you simply have to copy paste a couple of lines to set something up, you are missing out because of a distorted view.
I 100% agree there is a misconception that using the terminal is hacker stuff. The few programs I’ve had to build myself all had instructions to follow and they almost always work as is. If I have a problem I almost always find the answer googling, even if the answer is I’m screwed and the thing wont work. Also, as much as I hate to say it, AI will probably be able to troubleshoot random problems too even if it wipes a few computers in the process
That is absolutely using the shell as it comes with all the risks of doing exactly what you described.