First, My linux distro usually is on the net as I install it--with no input from me.
Second, how do you define "power user?" Someone who can push the right buttons? Or someone who actually knows what's going on and knows why he's doing what he's doing?
I understand why you say what you say--I jsut happen to disagree. I was coming from the point of a user who, once he's learned the ins and outs of his system, can perform necessary tasks far easier than his countepart in Windows.
As a really simple example, take this arbitrary exercise: You want to move five lines (paragraphs) from the middle of a text document to the end.
In MS Word; MS WordPad; or MS Notepad; all "user-friendly" Windows text editors, the quickest way to do this is:
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-X
- Ctrl-End
- Ctrl-V
(That's assuming you use the keyboard. Otherwise, you need some Click-and-Drag mouse operations and a reliable autoscroll.)
In vi, however, it is:
- d5d
- Shift-g
- p
Now, understanding that learning the software (learning curve) is harder, the task itself is easier for someone who has learned the software. With vi it is only 3 steps. Under Windows text editors, it is 8 steps. 3 steps is generally easier than 8 steps.
But you have to install it, part of the difference here for Linux is the general (though not complete) lack of availability of pre-installed. Newbies use the OS on the machine, once a person gets to the point of acquiring a Linux distro they've already moved past the point of a pure newbie.
Power users, the general definition, are people that can perform their own maintenance functions, and are fairly functional in keyboard shortcuts.
Quickest != easiest. That's one of the differences between power users and regular users, power users use the keyboard short cuts (actually your shortcut is wrong, to do that the keyboard shortcut way it's hold shift-down down down down down, ctrl-X, ctrl-end, ctrl-v; you don't need control and shift for that edit actually control makes it not happen). Regular users are going to use the mouse, click-hold-drag, menu, scroll and no you don't need a reliable autoscroll you can use the scrollbar, menu. Not as fast but easier to learn, it's actually very intuitive and requires no more knowledge than you can gain in 5 minutes of screwing around with the mouse and the menu options are pretty obvious ("hmmm Edit.... cut, sounds about right").
Which is exactly my point, vi is a classic example of expert friendly, incredibly powerful, incredibly fast, a stone bitch to learn. Counting steps is the wrong way to do it, when deciding if something is easier for the new user you look at the intuitiveness of the steps. Just how much knowledge would a person have to have in order to accomplish the task, regardless of the number of steps, it could take 100 steps but as long as each step is intuitive and can be readily deduced by some idiot you just dragged off the street who's never used this app before and possibly never used a computer before it's still probably pretty easy. Your definition of easy is power user centric, that's not the real world's definition of easy, in fact it's the exact opposite of what we use in real world usability testing. Sure if you know vi that's easy, IF you know vi, grab some guy off the street that's never heard of vi and ask him to perform that task it'll take him an hour if he can do it at all, dump the same text file and the same guy from a cave in front of Notepad and it'll take him 5 minutes tops and that's only if he's never used a mouse before. Notepad easy, vi expert friendly.