Wow!
Church of the machine God strikes... (From Deus Ex)
Endless Operating System
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Endless Operating System
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I've never really understood why command lines are so intimidating for people. Really? The most popular computing device of our time is the smartphone, and you don't understand why people find command lines intimidating? Command lines are unforgiving, frequently obscure, and will let you delete files and break things without blinking. There's plenty to be intimidated by for people who have no need to learn the skill…
Just a thought: that is more related to security models than to GUI vs CLI. In Windows you can delete and break things if you're a local admin. Warning messages got better, but using a PC also used to be intimidating. Smartphones on the other hand lock all apps by default, which is way better to novices. I believe CLIs might be made friendlier with the correct segregation / security model.
The lack of discovery makes it harder to learn CLIs, they need to be studied and memorized basically. There is no intuitive way to ever learn that you need to type "man bash" into the terminal to start this journey, for example. These are meaningless words to the layman, despite holding so much meaning to someone already fluent in bash.
Re: Endless Operating System
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK they are aiming the educational market. With some emphasis on developing countries and non-connected schools. The OS, for example, comes "with over 50,000 Wikipedia articles".
I did see that too- but if that's the case, why not just explicitly say so instead of all the vaguespeak.
Probably to avoid narrowing the public.
Re: Endless Operating System
#24Actually I think students need to learn to use apt. I swear, the entire reason I got comfortable with the command line is because when I was 16 I couldn't afford a Windows license, and I ordered a free Ubuntu CD. I'm still very good with the terminal and it serves me well in my six-figure career
I've never really understood why command lines are so intimidating for people. Especially in today's world where you can search up whatever commands you need fairly effortlessly through the power of the internet. A large majority of simple command line use cases tend to be $Command, $options $input file/directory $output file/directory That shouldn't be overly complicated for honestly most people with literacy who ar…
Normal computer users don't understand:
- What a filesystem is.
- How directories, files, and filesystems relate to one another.
- What a server is/does.
- How any kind of raw text whatsoever relates to what the computer "actually is" (the GUI)
- When or how or under what circumstances a program might read a file (say, re-reading a config file)
- What all that prompt noise means.
- Why some things they type on the command line work and why others don't—they don't understand that the things they're running are discrete programs and not somehow built in to the terminal or the OS, and they certainly don't understand the concept of a PATH.
- All kinds of magical bullshit you need to just know (or spend time finding out then internalizing) to use a command line (what the fuck is ".."? Why do I need to put "-" before things seemingly at random, but other times that breaks stuff? Et c., et c.)
- What they can even expect to be able to do on the command line (change permissions on files? Is that a thing you can do? Oh now you're going to need to learn how your OS permissions system works on a lower level than you've ever needed to know before, or else just blindly copy-paste from the Web and hope for the best)
And that list is far from comprehensive.
Re: Endless Operating System
#25They announced a pivot (in terms of organization, not technology) early this year https://www.endlessos.org/post/launching-endless-os-foundati...
Re: Endless Operating System
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why not. The worst thing that happens is maybe a teacher needs to reflash the OS, if you tell kids that no we're not going to play Minecraft today, we're going to make Minecraft you can inspire a lifelong love of programming. Sometimes you just got to strap yourself in and embrace the the terminal. If you're too afraid to try you'll never learn. Once around the same time I actually fried a motherboard by not moun…
You need a carrot at the end of the stick. Ramp up the complexity, with appropriate award system, to help with engagement. Your retroactive approach is saying - gosh, if I had my present day wisdom when I was I kid, then imagine all tactical things I can learn like apt or vim. I'm saying that is not a sustainable approach given a dataset that is the human population.
Actually I'm trying to say the opposite, I knew nothing when I was a kid. There was something awesome about getting your Wi-Fi driver to work after fighting it for 3 hours. It was very awesome struggle with Linux as a kid, not everything needs to be easy
Re: Endless Operating System
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never really understood why command lines are so intimidating for people. Especially in today's world where you can search up whatever commands you need fairly effortlessly through the power of the internet. A large majority of simple command line use cases tend to be $Command, $options $input file/directory $output file/directory That shouldn't be overly complicated for honestly most people with literacy who ar…
There's a ton of reasons people are afraid of CLIs, here's a few: 1. Graphical UIs are inherently more discoverable. There's no way around this and "googling it" isn't a good enough answer. 2. Graphical UIs, for better and worse, hide or limit you from doing things that will break. Those guardrails reduce the fear associated with exploration. There are guardrails on CLIs as well (sudo), but we take for granted what t…
I just type "help" into anything that looks like a prompt. From there things are usually discoverable enough, and if not, now I have strings, that I can C/P straight into a search engine. ;)
Re: Endless Operating System
#28Actually I think students need to learn to use apt. I swear, the entire reason I got comfortable with the command line is because when I was 16 I couldn't afford a Windows license, and I ordered a free Ubuntu CD. I'm still very good with the terminal and it serves me well in my six-figure career
I've never really understood why command lines are so intimidating for people. Especially in today's world where you can search up whatever commands you need fairly effortlessly through the power of the internet. A large majority of simple command line use cases tend to be $Command, $options $input file/directory $output file/directory That shouldn't be overly complicated for honestly most people with literacy who ar…
In the early 1990s a friend used to help run the computer my parents bought me. When he wasn't around it was like a paperweight. Command lines old and new are intimidating because you begin with a cryptic prompt image. Microsoft Windows and MacOS classic were much more accessible. Their help hovers, tooltips, and systems were a breath of fresh air compared to DOS.
Re: Endless Operating System
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a ton of reasons people are afraid of CLIs, here's a few: 1. Graphical UIs are inherently more discoverable. There's no way around this and "googling it" isn't a good enough answer. 2. Graphical UIs, for better and worse, hide or limit you from doing things that will break. Those guardrails reduce the fear associated with exploration. There are guardrails on CLIs as well (sudo), but we take for granted what t…
I just type "help" into anything that looks like a prompt. From there things are usually discoverable enough, and if not, now I have strings, that I can C/P straight into a search engine. ;)
zsh: command not found: helpRe: Endless Operating System
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I've never really understood why command lines are so intimidating for people. Really? The most popular computing device of our time is the smartphone, and you don't understand why people find command lines intimidating? Command lines are unforgiving, frequently obscure, and will let you delete files and break things without blinking. There's plenty to be intimidated by for people who have no need to learn the skill…
Just a thought: that is more related to security models than to GUI vs CLI. In Windows you can delete and break things if you're a local admin. Warning messages got better, but using a PC also used to be intimidating. Smartphones on the other hand lock all apps by default, which is way better to novices. I believe CLIs might be made friendlier with the correct segregation / security model.
>In Windows you can delete and break things if you're a local admin.
Yes, but deleting things with direct manipulation is more intuitive and less dangerous than doing it with rm and globbing.