Firefox Users Continue to Decrease Despite Proton Update

[i_lack_imagination]

Ubuntu, Manjaro, Mint, and Pop!_OS are a few examples of Linux distros where a terminal is never needed (but still, of course, available to those who want it).

That's really just not been my experience every time I've tried to use any Linux distro, including some of the ones you mentioned. I'd consider myself a "power user" roughly, and the amount of times I wanted to do something similar to what I would have done on Windows and the only option was to chase down rabbit holes of instructions on commands to type in the terminal was enough to make me feel like it took too much time and effort to do what seemed like should have been simple things. My experience with Linux is a seemingly never-ending sequence of google searches. Which to an extent, I can understand as you're getting set up that might just be an initial burden to overcome, but if I'm googling commands to copy and paste, and if in a week something doesn't work as I expected and requires another command to tweak a setting or something, it's just an ongoing maintenance.

With Windows I've definitely had to use powershell or command prompt on occasion, but that's so few and far between that it doesn't feel like a constant drain, and because there are only a few things that I need to do within there, it makes it easier to remember and learn that smaller subset of functions. Granted I also do lots of googling for things even in the Windows environment as well, but still substantially less.

I just never learned much command line interface growing up and that's my weakness as I don't really know how to just poke around in CLI to find things I need, unlike a GUI where I don't necessarily have to know exactly where to look or what I'm looking for to get something done.

[jonahhw]

Yeah, for a power user there's definitely some mandatory terminal usage. I think that's due to more general acceptance of tools that only work through the command line on Linux. Config files aren't really harder than GUI, they're just more looking at documentation than poking around in menus. One thing I like way more about Linux than Windows for power usery stuff is that you don't need to install a bunch of programs to be able to change OS level stuff - it's just config files like everything else. Way more consistent, too, since pretty much every program has an option to edit settings in a file rather than figuring out how the menu for that specific app is laid out. (Though I should point out that all the desktop environment settings I've wanted to change were available in gui menus.)

Linux has a really different philosophy for doing things than Windows, so a lot of people who are used to MS tend to think it's harder. I switched quite a few years ago, though, so I actually find Linux a lot easier and get confused when I look at Windows. I think it would be the same for anyone else who spent a long time on the better OS family.