That sort of command line finicky-ness is not terribly user-friendly.
No, it's not. The average user shouldn't have to mess around in the command prompt, regardless of the OS. Despite the constant call of Linux evangelists, Linux is far from the end-all, be-all Windows replacement. In many, many, many cases, Linux does not "just work."
Ubuntu, for instance, absolutely does not like my SATA controller/drives. Could I make it work? Sure, after hours of forum searching, googling, and playing with settings and drivers. Or I could try another flavor, but it might not like my sound card, another one might not like my embedded network interface, another might not like my scanner.
The absolute flood of "flavors" and kernel versions often requires that a user compile a program they want to use themselves. The average user, even many advanced users, coming from Mac or PC is not going to be able to do that. In my case, I
could, but it's a pain and I really don't want to.
Linux will likely
never beat windows or mac for # of installations, unless some unitization occurs. The Linux world is simply too broad right now, and too confusing for the average computer user. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva, Knoppix, Slackware, Gentoo.
Linux certainly has its place and it
certainly does some things better than MacOS or Windows. Security is superior in Linux, due to its development model, holes in security get patched up pretty quickly.
I enjoy playing around with it occasionally. But it is
not PanaceaOS, MessiahOS, or The One OS To Rule Them All. I'm far from a Linux hater, I just get annoyed at the parroted "Use Linux, instead!" every single time someone has a Windows problem. Linux is not one-size-fits-all, it's just another tool in the toolbox.
