I was recently watching a video on YouTube to pass the time waiting for a kernel update to compile. I was looking at some videos on UNIX and AIX in particular, when of course YouTube starts advertising me videos that are more marketable for advertisers and also in the same general genre, and one of those was the following video: I Tried Switching To Linux... Again by SAMTIME. I've never watched any videos by this person, but judging by the fact they had a sponsor for the video for an electronic device, I assume they are some kind of tech YouTuber. I clicked the video expecting pain; I had already gone through Linus Tech Tips' horrible Daily Driver Challenge.
And what stood out to me was the lack of basic computer literacy here. At one point, he's using ChatGPT for support doing a task. ChatGPT tells him to copy some files to a folder and reads out a directory name. Instantly, SAMTIME is terrified this is going to use the terminal, and when asking ChatGPT if it will, it says yes (which is not true; he was using Linux Mint which has a Windows Explorer-esque file manager where he could have just copy pasted the files like Windows). In fact, if he wasn't using ChatGPT in vocal mode, he could've easily read the directory name and most likely known where it is. The entire part of the video I watched, he was so terrified of using the terminal that he immediately closed ChatGPT when it said he had to use it to copy files. Something that isn't even true (thanks OpenAI, your product is so great...).
And then it hit me. Do most Windows users even know how to navigate a filesystem? It's like an advanced task now to do what should be basic tasks on a Windows system. A lot of software is installed to, or stores its configuration in, a hidden folder (that being %APPDATA%). Windows basically punishes you for ever straying out of the Desktop, Pictures, Downloads, or Documents folders. Files have their extensions hidden by default, obfuscating what software you should be using with your files and making it hard to look up alternatives. The only way to show extensions or hidden folders is to mess around in endless, confusing, identical menus. And now AI is built into the desktop to bandaid over that and make people less likely to even use a browser to do an internet search. Most people that use Windows just use one big folder on their Desktop as their storage for everything and sidestep the entire filesystem besides the Downloads folder and that's enough to get them by.
But Linux is different. Unlike what Windows makes you believe, configuring things through raw text files and the terminal is usually just plain easier than memorizing a million specific clicks and menus to get to a particular option. Configuring raw text means that you can usually leave out settings you don't care about and want to be default, and only include those you want to change, or leave comments for yourself on how stuff works and why you set it up the way you did. Since you're typing the raw text yourself, you should have an idea what's supposed to happen and how to fix it if it goes wrong.
And if you have to configure something through terminal commands, while the commands might be hard to remember there's always manual pages to help you out. Worst case, you can write your command into a text file to easily remember for next time, or take it one step beyond and just make it a shell script. Am I ever going to remember that the command to use for emerge to update my system is sudo emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --changed-use --verbose-conflicts @world? Probably not. But that's why I put it in a file, stuck #!/bin/sh in a line above it, saved it as update.sh, and put it in my home folder. Now I can just run the script to update - my update command is literally just update.sh - or, "Update: The Script."
Linux has a couple hard skills you have to learn. Nobody is denying that. But after watching my close friends have panic attacks trying to complete a class on Microsoft software like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access, how are those hard skills harder to learn than anything expected of Windows users?
My argument is that it's not actually harder to learn Linux than Windows. You just can't use Windows with a Linux mindset. You can't go in expecting to do everything in endless menus and confusing registry entries, never using the terminal ever for any reason, because then at that point you're just a slave to the current obfuscation of how computers work. GUIs are a mess of a computer using concept, because they add a ton of additional overhead code to your program just to be able to change settings, and there are often settings that even if they could theoretically be in a GUI, someone forgot to add a checkbox or the checkbox doesn't work, or some other issue springs up from time to time making that just not an option. Oftentimes, the only way to change settings even in GUI applications is through terminal options.
Learning to use the terminal is freeing — it lets you change everything on your system, with or without administrator privileges, with simple commands that you can just write down in a file or on a piece of paper. The commands are portable and are one of two types: 1) they work on every Linux/UNIX system with perhaps minor differences, or 2) they are commands specific to some piece of software on your system that is portable to any other system with that same software. For instance, no matter what Linux system I'm using, if it uses apt as its package manager (Debian, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, ...), I know I can update the system with sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. Knowing that one command lets you keep every piece of software on your entire system updated by just running it every few days or weeks. That's much, much easier (and more verbose, telling me what's going on) than trying to update the system with some visual package manager. There's nothing scary about it. In fact, the command mostly runs on its own, and when it needs your input, it tells you what to type next to continue.
And even if it is harder to learn and use — for instance, if you wanted to jump straight away into a Gentoo or by-hand Arch installation and afterwards learn how to use a tiling window manager, all at once — why is that a problem? When has anything worth doing been easy? Most people would say mathematics is not easy, and yet it's useful everywhere. Same goes with most fields: the price you pay for high quality workmanship and results is always high quality education and preparation. Learning how to overcome your expectations of what a computer is and see it in a different way that gives you more freedom is a worthwhile topic of serious study, which is why system admins, tech support, and computer scientists (specifically for Linux systems, at that) are actual careers in the wild you could have.
And yes, Linux has many benefits over Windows across the board: security, privacy, customization, ergonomics, even liberty with its 99% libre software. You do not switch to Linux and it's just different for the sake of being different and confusing. People don't use window managers with a completely different workflow to working with the desktop in Windows because they want to do something pointless. They do it because learning those skills gives them an edge. The "skill ceiling," or where they end up after having learned a lot of combined knowledge on Linux is astronomical compared to the clunky workflows on Windows, dragging windows around, having stuff snap to other stuff in bad ways, having ads and AI "assistants" bothering them, et cetera.
And back to the topic of filesystems and directories: isn't it great knowing where things are stored on your system? I know most people do most of their computing through the "cloud" now (online, with next to no files stored on the actual computer they're operating), which I have my own issues with, but knowing the directory structure of your computer means you know where all your software, configuration files, personal photos, software projects, and scripts are all located. On a Linux system, the stuff you personally care about is all in the home directory, with the abbreviation/shortcut ~. In a lot of circumstances you can copy just that one folder on your Linux system and have everything to recreate your same system, with all of its configuration intact and your files preserved. You can even store it on an external drive and hotswap it. There's not much that's hidden from you and there's no files (hopefully) that require anything but your user permissions by default to access in there. Nothing is stopping you from spreading out and enjoying your home directory instead of being cramped into one folder on the Desktop like Windows. You actually gain a ton of knowledge about a computer system just knowing the directory structure, which in my opinion is much more organized and straightforward on a Linux system than a Windows one. Though, you would gain a lot knowing this on either, they just store things in a different hierarchy from one another. The knowledge gives you abilities and more things you can do, like most practical knowledge should.
I can tell you that one of the biggest issues for me personally in today's dystopic internet world is privacy. On Windows, I am constantly the slave of keylogging, viruses, proprietary software with tracking and telemetry, and now even AI that screenshots your screen occasionally to send to Microsoft headquarters. Every time you click the eye icon to show your password that you just typed, you're at risk of losing access to your accounts on modern Windows operating systems. You reduce your amount of potential issues with these key problems drastically as soon as you install even a basic Linux installation not configured much for security. Just having an account separate from root and using sudo to run root commands is a huge boon to security and privacy. (Translated to Windows speak: "Having a non-administrator account and making yourself type the password whenever you need administrator privileges is a huge boon to security and privacy.") The Linux operating system is just one piece of the puzzle; the software all also being libre and respecting your privacy and security by default is the other 199 pieces of the puzzle, at least for myself.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say in a roundabout, rambling way is that people should not look at opportunities to learn and improve their understanding of computers and immediately scoff or paralyze in fear (especially not people who espouse themselves as tech YouTubers/experts). The terminal is different, yes. Does Windows make you use it, almost always no. But is it worth learning? I say yes. And is it that much harder or longer to learn than what you were using before? No, not at all.
That's all I got. Sorry I haven't written here much in awhile. I have been having trouble coming up with topics where I have collected enough thoughts to make bold statements. I like my pages on this site to be either thoughtful and inciteful, or practically useful. If I don't think I have a full real argument to give on a topic, or it's not a guide, then I don't write anything here.
May 26, 2025