[citation][nom]mousseng[/nom]It's not necessary, no, but if you don't you'll have one hell of a confusing and frustrating time if you don't.All you did was restate what you said earlier, so let me restate this: PC gamers and enthusiasts are not the majority of the desktop market. Yes, as Linux grows in popularity, it will gain software support; however, OEMs don't choose to put Windows on their computers because it has better software support, they choose it because it's the most popular. They also know that consumers want their computer to work right out of the box - Linux isn't generally known or designed to work that way.I'm not saying it's impossible for this to happen, I just don't think it will. And this is also completely discounting the fact that the OS landscape will be the same over the next few years - what if more alternatives (that aren't Linux-based) crop up? What if Windows 9 recaptures the enthusiast vote before too radical of a shift occurs?[/citation]
a lot of applications are moving to the web, google offered a scaled down version of office online, i can see many office applications going this direction at some point, and many are offered in linus distros as a default.
im assuming that if valve goes linux, they will have sorted out how to install and get working crap without going into command line, that probably isnt a large hurtle to meet.
once linux goes somewhat mainstream, i could honestly see a mozilla like effort to make it as good as possible and for free.
keep in mind, most people only use a computer for internet, and word processing, and watching videos online.
they get a computer with all they need pre installed, i doubt they would ever have to worry about upgradeing most of their software, and even than, those are the kind of people to take a pc to a computer shop.
gamers are a bit more willing to learn how to install things if they need to than a normal consumer, so i could see them getting use to command line to some extent to get things working.
the business level, people at the computer entering numbers, are not fixing or installing anything on a computer, its all IT departments, they get payed to do the hard stuff.
and on a pro level software, its much the same as what i said above, many of them have people to do it for them, and if not, are of the same mindset as gamers who would go into command line to get things up and running right.
we are seeing a push to get browsers to be a platform separate from the main os, if that comes to any conclusion, you could see os dependence for software severely drop, and probably any need for command line in linux to go away so long as the browser works.