The thing I loved most about BeOs is that it assumed you were a competent operator. They didn't hide "dangerous" settings from the user. For example, in the settings you could choose to turn each CPU in the machine on and off. But it didn't stop you from turning all of them off. And if you turned the last one off, the system halted, just as you'd expect. No warnings, nothing that stopped you. If you thought turning o…
I'm not sure I follow why this is a good thing. Having the option is good, but some sort of a sanity check and a warning dialog just seems like looking out for your users.
For example, I recently used Linux on the desktop as my daily driver and wrote about my experiences [1]. At one point, I considered that the system was perhaps a bit of a mess in regards to the installed packages and, not wanting to do a clean reinstall, I figured that I'd just reinstall Python in particular.
There's nothing mystifying about running an apt remove command, nor is there anything outrageous about the idea of removing some software and then later reinstalling it. However, as it turns out, this would probably break certain parts of the system, so I got a helpful warning instead:
After this operation, 1 244 MB disk space will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially harmful.
To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
Abort.
Of course, it won't always save you, like Linus from LTT still ignored such a warning and ruined his install somewhat [2].
[1] https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-...