I am convinced that Bash Shell Scripting is the single major technical obstacle towards massive adoption of Linux as a system. Any newcomer to Linux, suddenly confronted with half a page of documentation featuring a shell script, rapidly concludes that it is less risky to one's mental health to remain tied to the Windows bandwagon. One need only compare the readability of Python and Bash scripting to have an idea of where things ought to have gone and where they have stayed.

Is there any distro available who has tried to address this problem by eg. giving the interested novice a python-like scripting front end, enabling system configuration from the word go?

Most distros do not require ordinary users to know any scripting.
Which distro are you using? Gentoo?

It is not necessary to do system administration tasks via Bash scripts.
Python scripts are fine.
If you want to use scripts freely then slackware may be more suitable for you.

Er... that's completely true.

Most distros don't require you to do any scripting at all, and let you do absolutely everything from a desktop that's been customized by the distro developers. Of those, Mint is a good example.

Slackware is an exception in that it absolutely requires you to know at least the rudiments of BASH scripting. For example, how to comment stuff out. You can't configure a Slackware system at all otherwise.

Umm, I don't think an absolute beginner is going to be any more comfortable with python than bash. And is the Windows command shell any better?

I personally had no trouble understanding bash once I took the time to actually learn it. It has its weak points certainly, but it's no more confusing than any other language overall, and much easier than some. And these days there are a lot of good resources available to help you learn that I didn't have 10 years ago. I sure wish I'd had the Bash Guide available when first starting out!

In any case, bash is based around POSIX sh scripting syntax, and as Linux attempts to be a POSIX-compatible OS, it pretty much requires sh scripting at the basic maintenance level. So no matter what you do, if you dive into the core of the system eventually you're going to have to confront bash-like scripting.


But if you're looking for a shell that's designed explicitly with entry-level user-friendliness in mind, you might check out fish, the Friendly Interactive Shell. It apparently hasn't seen much in the way of active development recently, but it looks like it's under new management now; the project page says there's a new 2.0 release planned for this year:

http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/beta.html

Why not install Perl/Python if that's what you prefer?
LINUX is a developers platform. You can get any IDE/Compiler/Language you prefer.
try out csh for a truly elegant scripting engine.
I would read the bash guide and do some research first.
BASH really is one of the best tools out there.

LOL like I said, there are more IDE's for LINUX than you can shake/sling ...

I found this (PYTHON) IDE here
http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/

You need to do some research before commenting like that. If you want a pres configured district their are ones out there that require point and click only. (Mint Susse Manjaro) So it is really a matter of what you want to do.