• historicaldocuments@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    The average user can’t be expected to remember all of the commands needed to use their regularly used programs

    They were expected to do so for decades, or they hired a computer (as in a person) to do it for them ($$$).

    the terminal could be used to reformat storage devices, but MintStick essentially replicates the Windows GUI for doing it

    Depends on what you mean by “doing it.” I’ll look in a second, but from the name and your description I’m guessing it’s got parted/mkfs.xxxx/dd and the lot installed on it, maybe something for dealing with boot sectors or GRUB. I’m also guessing that behind the scenes it’s just using a GUI to build up the command line behind the scenes, and I like that style of GUI.

    The more users Linux has the more resources it will get.

    Concur.

    For power users, nothing stops developers from also maintaining terminal support.

    UX design/GUI development isn’t entirely orthogonal with backend core program stuff, but they’re close. I’ll argue that you’re better off starting with the core stuff and save the GUI for later.

    I looked at the mintstick code. It looks like it’s using python to pull down some OS image from the internet and burn it to a USB. I’d rather just stick to the way I know :-) I didn’t know python had a parted library, so that’s new.

    I am all for more people knowing how to use a computer, but I’m also in the camp that I ate the learning curve enough years ago that I don’t want to give up my ways. I don’t expect everyone to want to master the terminal, but I won’t give up the power in favor whatever a GUI designer chooses to implement. The trade isn’t worth it to me.