Let the apologists have a field day in the comments.
Hey man, it's no surprise the gui people are good at making the gui settings in the gui :P
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
900 points (97.7% liked)
linuxmemes
22425 readers
1374 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
- These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. 🇬🇧 Language/язык/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇺🇸
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
My favourite part of Linux cli is you only know you've done something when you get no feedback at all.
I've been using linix for like 18 years and I still prefer GUI over CLI hands down. Make things easy by letting me click on some nicely explained buttons.
"No, honey. We have Linux at home,"
Linux at home:
linix
I don't care if settings are done by GUI or terminal, I just want clear and concise descriptions for specific settings and not a condescending "go read the man pages you fucking noob". I've been fucking with Linux for over a decade now; a lack of clear documentation is not my problem, and at this point is unacceptable.
go read the man pages you fucking noob
And when you actually go and read the man page, it says some shit like "Some of these options are not fully documented. For an accurate description of their functionality, consult the source code"
Recursive comments
Especially when the settings are named the same/similar as other apps but do different things
Just fucking comment line quickly what the fucking thing does you dickheads, or use your settings page for more than 3 things and stop hiding everything else in your fucking .YAML (also Stop using .YAML)
YAML is good for scripting services (like docker stacks), but otherwise I agree, stop using it for absolutely everything.
I also wish Linux used a standardized config file format.
Sounds like you're gonna love nixos
I've been fucking with Linux for over a decade now; a lack of clear documentation is not my problem, and at this point is unacceptable.
Well seems to me that the lack of clear documentation is in fact your problem.
I mean, fucking around for a decade?!
: P
Hey, hey - stop that.
This makes sense, within reason. Limiting the visibility of low level system settings and statistics is good for the normal user’s experience. That is not just to keep them from breaking their system, but it also makes the commonly used settings easier to navigate and use.
I don’t say this in a gatekeeping way either. I am a developer and old computer nerd who has a terminal open pretty much all the time. But I also run Mint and I use the GUI for all kinds of stuff. If I may stretch to make a metaphor, the primary user-friendly UI from the driver’s seat of my car doesn’t have indicators or controls for all kinds of things I care about, but they are things I don’t need to do every day in the middle of a drive. I can do something out of the ordinary to get to them when the need arises.
The nice thing about Linux is that in the GUI these things are merely hidden. They aren’t locked down and denied access entirely like you might get with a commercial OS.
The worthwhile discussion/argument IMO is just where best to draw that line. I personally don’t have strong opinions on the computer side because I am comfortable with CLI and text files. My gut feel is that more GUI is good, but my suspicion is that actual “normie” users want simple. To them the OS is just the screen that holds the icons for their apps, like a smart phone. It is not a gargantuan tree of settings they can peruse like I might.
Funny though, I DO have a strong opinion in the case of my car metaphor. I currently drive an old economy car, and it doesn’t have a coolant temperature gauge. There’s just a warning light for when the coolant is already too hot or is still cold and warming up. The lack of the gauge doesn’t affect the performance of the car and it has not ruined my day in over a decade of ownership, but I’m a bit of a car guy and an engineer to boot, so I want more information like you might see in a truck or sports car.
That’s another nice thing about the open nature of Linux. There isn’t one official setup that everybody gets out of the box, which can be confusing, but it can certainly be made to fit many different people’s needs.
What people expect:
✅Fix my box
❎Fuck my shit up
What we would get: System Kernel Interface
🔳 Regex Recursion
🔳 Kernel Language (Internal) [Dropdown: en-us, Dvorak, binary, Klingon, non-binary (Borg analog), Esperanto]
🔳 Ignore LPT on fire
🔳 Memory hole on sysctl
🔳 Mansplain man(8)
Yeah some people seem to have this expectation that there should just magically be a button to unbreak the PC. They talk about their personal pain points when using Linux as if there's a conspiracy of devs to hide the unbreak buttons for the sake of elitism, but that... just isn't a thing? If it was that easy to fix an issue, you probably wouldn't need to fix it because the system would already come unbroken by default. I sympathize with everyone's Bluetooth configuration woes but mostly it's a pain in the ass because Bluetooth, in general, is a pain in the ass, not because of elitist devs (who I should mention are doing this in their free time for no pay. There's almost no money in desktop Linux, unlike in servers).
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sure.... Want to fix the stupid new menus in windows 11? Oh it is just a new guid key in the registry in a location you wouldn't expect. You know just cut and paste shit into the registry you found on the internet. Windows is just as annoying, if not more so.
In any case: what system GUI's do you want? GUIS make everything so much harder, careful what you wish for.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Windows users are used to everything being so locked down that it's virtually impossible to mess up your system... lots of this stuff is in config files because exposing it for everyday users would be asking for people to completely brick their workflow.
If you put every option in a GUI, there would be so much stuff that nobody could find anything.
I think you just discribed windows I know my head hurts looking at GPOs.
No Windows put everything in a GUI, then added a second GUI that didn’t quite have all the functionality of the first one so kept both around, then despite the second GUI existing for nearly 10 years it still couldn’t do everything the first one could and then they completely redesigned it rather than just introducing all the functionality from the first GUI, but they removed some of the functionality of the second GUI from the first GUI so now both GUIs are incomplete and full of functions that just link to the other GUI
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
YaST on OpenSUSE is pretty nice.
I always viewed YaST as SMIT(ty) for linux. Haven't looked at suse in forever, though.
load more comments
(2 replies)
*openSUSE enters the chatroom
SUSE/openSUSE are the only ones that have it figured out. It requires a lot of polish, but it's the only distro that seems to really care about a deeper system configuration through GUI, and that's really appreciated.
It's why I'm so furious about Linux in general and how every god damn intent to change almost any setting begins with "open Terminal...". I don't want to use the damn Terminal. It's 2025 now, put the god damn basic ass settings into control panel so I can click it without first spending half an hour to find a long noodle of commands for Terminal that I don't even understand, paste it in and hope for the best.
Like, I had issues with Bluetooth module in my laptop and I wanted it disabled so my BT USB dongle is main. In Windows I'd just go to Device manager and disable that device. Done. On Linux I spent hours diging on how to disable BT module and weed out all the bullshit on how to disable the function itself because I need it, just not from the fauly module. Then I spent asking on Reddit where someone finally posted a working Terminal command that I had to save into config file using Terminal because file manager is to stupid to save it into system area by just asking me if I want it there or not. I now have a folder with config file and instructions on what stupid ass copy command for Terminal I need to use to copy the config file where it needs to be.
Just so much unnecessary bullshit for something that could be done in literal 5 clicks at worst if the damn option was in GUI to disable single device on the system. Also fun fact, Linux has a "wireless devices" tool, command line one and it uses device ID to apply it and the fucking ID changes every time for the device so you can't make a permanent setting. I kid you not. I've never seen anything more idiotic.
This is such a stupid take. Gui obscures the thing that you want to do behind endless buttons and menus and some bullshit that some self-proclaimed "user experience engineer" thought would be "intuitive". With cli it's like you're talking directly to the computer. Want to stop the networking service? service networking stop. Couldn't be simpler!
Also fun fact, Linux has a “wireless devices” tool, command line one and it uses device ID to apply it and the fucking ID changes every time for the device so you can’t make a permanent setting.
Are you talking about rfkill? Strange, for me the ID's don't change. But even if they do for you, what's stopping you from getting the ID just by grepping for the device name? Something like rfkill list | grep YOUR_DEVICE_NAME | cut -d ':' -f 1 | xargs rfkill block.
Calls it stupid take, proceeds to give me most absurd noodle of a commandline for something that could simply be a Enable/Disable button on a device list panel that every idiot with no prior knowledge of Linux, CLI or memorized command could do it. I think proved my point once again.
It would take you less time to put together that one-liner than to find the correct button in an unfamiliar gui. How exactly does that prove your point?
BS, I looked online for hours and waited for replies on reddit and no one gave me this line. So, no, I'd in fact do it via GUI in minutes where it took me hours for some backwards config that doesn't look anything like this that made me do what I wanted. With extra steps to copy that stupid file into system folder, of course via stupid Terminal because I couldn't do it through file manager in any way. The level of stupid Linux has to configure trivial things is just astounding.
And what's weird is how Linux purists always whine about it. Like, I don't care, keep using your stupid Terminal, just give me damn GUI for this basic shit. I don't want to waste time and memorize idiotic noodles of commands to do trivial shit. No one is taking away any of the stupidity you love, just give ME the choice. Instead the only choice is use of stupid CLI. Ugh.
Also it's not "unfamiliar" GUI. It's called practical deduction. If I need to do this and this I already know I might need to look under this and that category in settings or just type rough related words in search and it would show me the setting. If whoever makes GUI isn't a complete moron, it would be easy to find. Good luck with any of that with CLI where you need to input exact command from start. Your logic just makes no sense.
load more comments
(22 replies)
Plasma 6 settings GUI more capable than windows settings idk wym. Only thing I've had to edit in the terminal in the last several months has been automount on a hard drive.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I think there should be a standard for config files, where it defines all of the options and possible values, so that an app can be made to modify them.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yeah, some distros have GUIs for system settings, like openSUSE and Mageia, but advanced users will often even take that as a reason to not use those distros, because they themselves don't need that on their system. And because not many advanced users use these distros, it's hard to recommend them for noobs, because it makes it more difficult to find help resources. Kind of a stupid situation...
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›