Dunno man, I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for almost 3 decades. It’s been ok for me :) conversely I can’t stand using windows for more than a few minutes - luckily I don’t have to do this often.
If you're a veteran Linux user, you probably know where to look for config files and how to hack them. Trying to use Linux using GUI only, whichever you choose, is awful. It's like the designers copied the worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS on purpose and then added some of their own.
You don't need to hack config files. The big DEs have GUI settings for pretty much everything macOS or Windows does. The only reason it might not seem like it is tutorial websites where it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs.
"it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs"
Yeah, that's the thing. It often feels GUIs on linux are meshed together from at least 7 different styles and paradigms and too often they are indeed made like this.
So in Ubuntu for example I sometimes had to click left to close a window and sometimes right.
What laypersons want, is one single way to do things, that works.
But you just won't get far, without the terminal. That is, things do run pretty much out of the box if you are lucky - until they don't. And then good luck trying to fix it without the terminal. I can parse and usually fix cryptic error messages and logs, but my father (who is a trained engineer, but no english speaker nor programmer) cannot.
Unless of course there is a driver issue. I seldom can fix them and I encountered too many over the years.
In either case, I am lucky that linux exists and I am now off to try out EndeavourOS ..
I get this effect much worse on windows. Right click the volume icon in the task bar and look through the windows you get. There's three different styles dating back to Windows 95!
Flip through stuff on the control panel and you'll get the same mash of code heaved forward from the 90s. It's a bad look, and I've always been so confused why Microsoft doesn't do anything about it. Seems like a great pet project for some nth level middle manager to get sweet bonuses for.
Do you remember the two control panels from Windows 8, where some settings were available only in one and others in the other? One did look quite modern.
I prefer using the GUI, but frequently find I have to hop back into the terminal to chmod/chown some file that's ended up without the appropriate permissions. I think a casual user would probably give up at that point.
Yes. The only problems are that the control panels are incredibly illogical at best (this is one of the things I meant with the "worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS and some of their own), and often just don't seem to work or need to be used in a specific non-intuitive way. Command line and config files are the way to stay sane and get things done.
