Unfortunately, there also seems to be an underlying belief amongst that same community, that ease of use is somehow a weakness.
It's not a weakness in itself, but it is different. It's a different way to design a system, it's a different way to use a system. Increased ease of use is almost always associated with a reduction in flexibility. You simply CANNOT have a GUI with one big button in the middle that does everything a user might need a computer to do.
I respectfully submit that by far and away the biggest growth area in computing devices, is in phones and tablets, where no other type of interface is possible.
I totally understand that producing a GUI represents a lot of work. I've done it. But it's not just 'wasted effort to save people who are lazy from having to learn anything'. A GUI isn't just a configuration device, it's a fantastic way to show off what a tool is actually capable of doing, or not doing.
Let me cite a concrete example. Not so many years ago I was running Ubuntu as my everyday desktop OS. It was around the time when wireless networking was really taking off, but manufacturers were reluctant to provide open source drivers for their wireless chipsets. So, getting wireless to work at all required a massive amount of effort by the developers... something for which, as a user, I'm both grateful and indifferent in equal measure.
Despite this, the difficult and important bit had actually been achieved. Provided I went through the hassle of downloading the Windows driver, extracting microcode from it using a command line tool, installing the right version of some package from somewhere, and sacrificing a chicken under a full moon, it worked.
Only... even after all this, the final 10% of effort simply hadn't been put in. There was no nice, simple drop-down box listing all available networks to choose from. No easy way to say "connect to this one automatically at start-up". Actually
using the wireless network was
still a pain, until several releases later when the UI was finally finished.
Most Linux users are of the belief that once you get past that initial learning curve, the benefits outweigh the time invested.
This particular user decided that permanently living on an uphill part of that curve was a painful waste of time for little or no actual benefit, gave up, and is now much happier and more productive with Windows.
Unfortunately, given the direction Windows is going, I may have to switch back. I don't relish the prospect. Dragons to slay, and all that.
Yes Linux can be a PITA at times, but I find Windows to be far more of a PITA far more often, which is why I use it as little as possible. I still keep it around though because there are some programs I need it for. I also keep Linux around because there are a LOT of programs and a LOT of jobs I simply can't do, at all, if I could only use Windows.
I completely agree. I use Cadence schematic and PCB software professionally, every day, and there's no OrCad for Linux.
Not sure there's any solution to that problem other than a separate Windows PC with a hardware firewall that only lets it access my file server, and nothing else.