@Julian
Julian,
I do think that if you work in computer maintenance then you should know how to at least write moderately complex shell scripts. PERL or PHP would be better still.
If you are a user then, yes, I think you should spend at least two hours a week with a manual, learning how your computer works and how to do more than just point and click.
I do not see where my comments belittle people. My comments criticise Ubuntu, and try to mock people who exhibit a slavish uncritical addiction to it's UI, and point out that Linux GUI has been static or merely copying commercial GUIs for very long.
Seems I hit a nerve. Good, I'm glad of that. I am not involved in system admin work to better the Ubuntu community. If Linux fits the requirement I use it, if Windows does I use that. One more person saved from the clutches of for-pay software is not a moral victory of any significant dimension and ought not be a deciding factor in choosing a distro or an OS.
Being open source, mod price, should not be a significant determinant in picking an OS: Novell Netware prior to the attempt to glue it onto a Linux kernel was a far superior server OS to Linux or UNIX; only an idiot installs even Ubuntu Linux on a machine for gaming; Windows is indeed, so sorry, easier to use though generally less powerful.
Would you accept an argument that you should drive a model of car that with a crippled accelerator because that car somehow will help draw people away from using other 'bad' cars? Yet this is just the evangelical attitude I get from Ubuntistas, and it is BS in either case.
God help us if we should expose the small soft pink jelly-like users to the terrifying black and white command prompt?
No, if we have any respect for the users' intelligence we should be pushing the command prompt right beside the GUIs.