I’m a 20yo, Hella Autistic, ADHD-riddled spaz that likes to tinker with programs and software settings alot. I’m building a pc for the first time right now, and while I am tech savvy; or more tech savvy than most; coding, programming, tech engineering is complete and utter gibberish, and it seems like the only people that use Linux are HEAVILY experienced with those things I just listed… HOWEVER… I’m not. I just like digging around various program settings or messing with things, or personalizing them as much as I can.

The more I delve into tech or tech related spaces; whether its through building my pc or just- using this website; the more people wont stop yapping about “OOH LINUX, I LOOOVE LINUX.” and every time I ask about it and why I should use it, they make it out like its an absolute godsend piece of technology (im sure it is tbh… it does look nice)

But then looking into it myself, all I see is a bunch of technical word vomit that makes no god damn sense to me. and the more I ask for people to explain this to me, the worse my confusion becomes. now I’m learning there’s like 40 different “Distro’s”… Someone else told me about Linux Mint, which looks nice, but again- I DO NOT want to be forced to use a terminal just to get the most outta my operating system. I like having some kind of UI to use.

idk man… from everything they say I can do with it, ESPECIALLY in terms of customization, I’m so tempted to use it. But my mental understanding of whatever tf Linux is, is at best a toddler’s.

  • @theunknownmuncher
    1•3 hours ago

    I definitely understand where you’re coming from, but at this point I’ve had so many JustWorks™️ Linux systems, including set up on my parents’ PC for well over 5 years without one single problem or breaking update, and they certainly are never opening up the terminal.

    I’ll stick with my suggestion that Linux is not for anyone with a strong aversion to terminals.

    My experience tells me that this is just objectively wrong, or I’d be getting calls from my parents, HOWEVER, I will concede that maybe this is only wrong if you just want a bulletproof system that works without messing around much.

    If OP wants to mess around and get dirty in settings, then I’ll give it to you that they might need to be a bit more open minded about the terminal. I haven’t really tried much GUI configs or settings besides really common, typical stuff, like network config or power saving modes/settings, because I just go right to the terminal regardless.

    But its just wrong to claim that someone who doesn’t want to use a terminal will have a problem on Linux, it just depends heavily on what you are trying to do. For the tasks that most people use a personal computer for, there won’t be anything holding you back.