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i am once again begging windows users to understand that linux nerds give you instructions in the form of terminal commands because "paste this in" is a million times faster than trying to lead you through the gui one button at a time, not because the gui doesn't exist

I feel like teaching users to paste something into the terminal that they dont understand is creating an easy vector for malicious actors. A GUI cant download and run a malicious program all in one ctrl+v - Enter. Going through a GUI gives time to think and take in context clues. /1

And like, I do use the terminal and find it more efficient for some purposes. Hell my VPS I only connect w/ a terminal. But it takes an extra level of nerd. A GUI is easier to teach so they arent reliant on you, and also can screen better for malicious actions.

there is an entire industry of scams that open with "ok install this remote desktop software so i can have full control of your computer"

Yes there is. But that is just whataboutism. We arent actively teaching people to install the remote desktop apps so malicious actors then have an easier time convincing people to do it. Teaching them to paste random terminal commands opens up a new vector.

? windows has a long-standing culture of solving problems by installing random stuff from the internet. or modifying random registry keys or whatever. this is an inherent problem with getting tech support from randos and i don't think "click this stuff in the gui" is somehow inherently better

there are other people in this thread talking about the same thing happening *on windows* with powershell commands too

the nice thing about shell commands is that you can at least in principle look up each bit individually. i don't think there's like comprehensive documentation of registry keys, and the help for individual buttons in a dialog often assumes you already know all the other context

It's kinda bad because javascript lets the site push arbitrary text to the clipboard, unless someone thinks to paste it in notepad first there basically isn't a way to inspect it first

yeah i'm thinking about that scam going around that's basically "paste this in terminal" framed as a "captcha", and this criticism is so weird in that light, as if people don't blindly follow instructions of all kinds already

Ya, its not a linux specific issue. Windows has powershell that can lead to the same issues. But GUIs do produce more friction and confirmation dialogue boxes. Terminals assume you know what you want to do. Typing it is the confirmation.

Generally in a gui, there are save, or input field or all sorts of interactions that need to happen to accomplish a task. This slows down the process. It gives the user more time to think and process what things are doing. There's a reason a big part of scams is urgency.