Rough Spots

Last night, I ran into one of those little rough spots in Linux that reminds you that there's still margin for improvement.

I was informed by the FireFox browser on my Acer that my FlashPlayer plug-in was outdated, and FireFox had disabled it for security reasons.  A quick check through 'Fox's plug-in checking page (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/) confirmed.

Now, the "problem".  There's no nice, easy way (ie, in the GUI) to upgrade this plug-in under Mint.  You have to manually download, then go into Terminal, and through the command line remove the old plug-in, then copy and paste the update in.

OK, it's not that hard, and there are plenty of "how-to's" online to walk you through it.  But, it's the command line.  How many people are comfortable with that?  I'm talking about John Q., here, not the usual people who are identified (rightly) as Linux adepts.

I'm talking about the people Linux has started to heavily court, the people they want to switch from Windows to Linux.  The people who could give Linux market share...

To be honest, I'm sort of one of those people.  It's around 20 years since I sat and typed commands at a prompt.  Since then, I've become a bit of a GUI-softie.  I switched to Windows in the early 90s, and was fairly quickly weaned off the command line.  When I switched to Mac a few years ago...  Well... 

I think I used the Mac Terminal once, to correct an idiot installation mistake in SheepShaver.  I simply had to erase a couple hidden files.  A die-hard Windows user friend of mine was horrified when I told him of my very short dip into "raw" UNIX.  "Oh my God!  You had to do WHAT?"

And therein lies the core of the rough spot.  In this day and age, Joe or Joelina Average doesn't want to be typing commands.  He/She doesn't even remember how to type commands.  The Jobsian fantasy of "GUI for Everybody" has done it's thing.  The bulk of the computer-using population has become a bunch of point 'n clickers.  (Or just pointers, if you're fiddling with a tablet.)

And, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, Linux ain't gonna make real headway till Joe & Joelina never have to see that Terminal thingie in action.  Ever.

Now I know that I've probably just painted a target on myself for all the true Linux believers out there.  How dare I question the Terminal!  But, I'm not.  In fact, I readily admit that working in the Terminal can be faster and more efficient than the GUI.  And it's damned good to have a knowledge of what's going on under the hood.  (I really need to brush up myself.  My UNIX command knowledge went cold after I tried my hand with the Korn Shell running on some variant of AT&T UNIX back in grad school...)

But, until you can tell Joe & Joelina that they will never have to type a command...  Well...

I have my doubts...  And that's coming from somebody who truly loves the Linux experience.

In fact, I'm looking at snagging another distro for tryouts.  Thinking about snagging a copy of Zorin OS Lite and seeing if it will run on my old Acer work laptop that I recently salvaged from the back room.  It's a nice machine, with a cool techie look to it.  However, the WinXP install is getting long in the tooth, and it's time to move on...

We'll see...