Sorry - been elsewhere arguing other things
I learned "Job Control Language" many years ago in a brief interlude now best forgotten, when I was learning to drive the IBM 360/50 downstairs, just in case. Quickly forgotten, I'm happy to say.
The "Job Control Language" I referred to above is the stuff I had to type at Linux to get it to work. For example, to make the sound card go (not exactly an arduous task in Windows - it "just worked"), I had to type at it:
-d alsa --device emu10k1
jackd -d alsa -d sblive
jackstat -Rv -d alsa -p128 -n2 -r44100
asfxload
How did I find out that lot? It's not on any website! I don't even know if it's right - but it worked. It doesn't any more, since I installed some plugins for Firefox, but I don't mind the Linux machine being silent.
To install a downloaded package that isn't covered by kpackage, the aficionado has to type stuff like:
ar xvfz zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.3
make clean
./configure -s
make
make install
It's not a problem if you can copy and paste, or if you can tell -1 from -l from -I but I did find it a little less than totally intuitive.
I'm told it's getting a lot easier, and I've used a Knoppix CD on a friend's Windows laptop which wouldn't boot and threatened to lose several gigabytes of digital photos that he'd not backed up... (He thought he had, but something hadn't worked). Knoppix recovered the lot. That
was impressive.