Comment Re:Lol (Score 1) 936
Forget Debian/Ubuntu/etc. Then, ask yourself what an "apt" is. And why it has anything to do with installing programs.
I have the good fortune of being able to recognize "apt" as an (english) adjective which roughly means "suitable". So far so good: "apt" might be an attempt to describe quality rather than function. But hm, maybe it's an acronym. The "p" might be for "program" but in this case I'm coming in with enough knowledge to realize that I'm installing "packages" rather than programs. "a" for "advanced" because it's a pretty good buzz word. "t"? Nope, stumped, so let's just look it up
Sure, I would never guess on my own that the installer was called "apt", but being able to recognize an adjective when I see one was enough for me to avoid confusion.
Then, still remembering that you're forgetting you know Debian/Ubuntu, ask why you need "install" at the end of "apt-get", which sounds like you're already asking the system to get the program you're asking for. Non-geeks don't care about the difference between "get" and "install", and the redundancy throws a wrench in their understanding.
And there's a very simple, already implemented way to work around any confusion coming from this hyphenation problem. People could simply stop telling new users to type in "apt-get install" and instead use "aptitude install". As a bonus, you don't have to use two different base commands for installing and searching since "apt-cache search" becomes "aptitude search".
Yes, this still leaves the "what does a word that means 'skill' or 'talent' have to do with installing programs" issue (oh, haha, the program has a 'talent' for installing programs). But giving things arbitrary-but-sometimes-maybe-sorta-related names applies as much to dogs (going back to the previous comparison). Or taking a well-known program: do people really wonder what 'firefox' has to do with the internet? Seems to me that the understanding is as simple as "there's this program that happens to be called firefox that you can use for browsing the internet".