Recently, I have been seeing a few more web articles and blog posts on the great user friendliness debate. This debate is all about which OS is the most user friendly, and it usually started from when someone claimed a particular OS is not user friendly.
Rather than adding more hot air to the endless argument (that has been discussed to death, really) this post is merely to clarify a certain practice I used when posting in this blog.
Command line myth
I often use command line interface (CLI) when posting instructions about Ubuntu. An unfamiliar reader lacking the background understanding, might wrongly conclude that Ubuntu needs a lot of CLI for day-to-day operation. This is really not true.
Most normal tasks a user would do in Ubuntu can be done by the graphics user interface (GUI). As recent as one or two years ago, there were gaps in the GUI. But these have been methodically fixed and it is really quite possible to avoid CLI nowadays.
Simply, I use CLI for brevity. In other words, it is faster and simpler to explain an operation by using CLI, rather than GUI. Let me illustrate with an example.
Let’s say I wanted to install codecs. Out-of-the-box, Ubuntu does not come with many codecs, like MP3, flash, etc. To add these codecs, you install a package called “ubuntu-restricted-extras”.
The GUI explanation
The GUI explanation will be something like this:
1. Open “Add/Remove Applications” from here:
Panel Menu > Application > Add/Remove
2. Select “All available applications” from the dropdown list (top-centre of the dialogbox).
3. Search for “ubuntu-restricted-extras” using the Search box (top-right of the dialogbox).
4. Enable the checkbox next to the “ubuntu-restricted-extras”, and click “Apply Changes”.
Hence, you have now installed “ubuntu-restricted-extras”.
The CLI explanation
On the other hand, this is the CLI explanation.
Type the following in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Conclusion
See how much easier and faster it is with CLI? This is especially useful when giving this instruction thru IM or the phone. While the task is easily doable from the GUI, the power of CLI is simply unbeatable.
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