I just don't get why it takes reading up on to simply install software on it. I'm sure it's easy when you know how. Definitely not noob friendly. Took me ages to get VLC installed on YDL for the ps3.
YDL is a bit of an obscure distro, though, isn't it?
Haven't used Linux in about 3 years (what I moved to OS X from). Is it still so hard for noobs? I figured Ubuntu at least would have sorted out some decent graphical configuration tools by now.
The biggest problem I always found with distros' own config tools is that they are very often too buggy to be of use. If you want to use Linux properly, you NEED to learn how the command line works, and you need to be familiar with a few configuration file formats.
I think the common need to use the terminal to get things working on Linux is mostly due to two things:
1) There are so many distros with small differences and different versions/locations of libraries that it's very difficult to get an app up and working on all of them flawlessly.
2) Most apps are written by volunteers scratching their own itch. It would generally mean a large time investment to get installation/setup to work flawlessly everywhere in GUI mode, without adding anything to the core utility of the app. As their income isn't dependent on getting as many users as possible, it's simply not worth it to them when the same result can be achieved with a bit of graft in the terminal by the user. Which is fair enough. If I've spent hundreds of hours writing an app for myself and give it to you for free, while I might be more than willing to help you with any bugs you have, I'm not likely to be much moved by the argument that you can't be bothered to copy and paste a couple of lines of text into a terminal.