Do we have (and use) the right verbs?

[abathur]

@Raikiri

I honestly think that from a user’s perspective it’s always easier to use familiar terms for the most common operations in the CLI even if they don’t have the same exact meaning that they have in other systems.

This is sort of precisely the problem:

There is a thing in the CLI that maps quite literally to the word install, and yet I think there’s fairly broad agreement that imperatively installing things with nix-env is a tarpit for new users. What do new users need to guess to find an approach successful users would recommend?

@Raikiri

Another recent development where this “precision terminology” really backfired is the term “flake”: unless the user knows exactly what they’re searching for, there’s currently no way to discover that such concept even exists and that it actually might be a solution to a problem they’re facing.

I don’t think this has much to do with the “precision terminology” and has everything to do with flakes still being an experimental feature. If/when flakes become canonical, the term will be unavoidable.