We're running in circles here.
And yet still most walkthroughs are written targeting a particular distribution. And walkthroughs for Windows use images and notations like Start -> Control Panel so I see no reason why we can't do the same on KDE and Gnome.
Oh man it's so annoying when people do this. For example, when making a bootable thumb drive for Ubuntu, their tutorial assumes you already have ubuntu installed (it's windows OSX and ubunu, not windows OSX and Linux). I cannot post here what I would do to the person that wrote that tutorial.
Oh, Canonical! You had the nerve of writing a howto for
your own distro and posting it on
your own servers, in
your own enterprise's page, which you paid for with
your own money. Now, have you thought about that poor guy running his customized Linux From Scratch? Did he even crossed your mind for a second? What's that unfortunate and defenseless newbie, who barely managed to compile his own kernel and a whole system on top of it, going to do now? You're so self-centered Canonical! *sigh*
Now, if you look at the example I posted, down at the bottom of the page you will see the alternative instructions right there, written in pure and pristine bash language for your enjoyment.
Come to think of it, your example is a clear demonstration of what I said: There's almost always an easier way to do it, but we expect people to do it the hard way. (And while I'm at it, at least the Ubuntu tutorial looks stylish and eye-catching. That's important for the user's experience too.)
Learn bash; once you know it you won't know how you managed without it.
Learning bash hasn't changed my life in any significant way. It didn't get me a better job, a warmer house or a luxury car. Learning web development in Java took me half the time. It gave me an official certification, friends, valuable contacts, and a small yet much appreciated scholarship. To be clear, I'm not a materialist person, but given experiences like that, do you really expect people to learn bash, something most of them will never actually have a use for in their whole life? Sure, it may be a nice tool to have in your arsenal, but I expect an OS to be usable without it.
And just for the record, I love Linux, I love Debian (my first full time distro), I've been a Linux user for the last seven years. It's just that I'm not blind, I know end users have requirements we're not meeting yet (except for Android, of course.)
With that said, I almost forgot about Ubuntu for Android. Depending on how well it works, I can imagine it being an alternative to Surface.
This.
Also, I imagine having Ubuntu or Android installed in one of those ARM Surface things would be pure glory. That's, if UEFI allows it...
