"They are by and for (musical) computer techies in academia, not ordinary windows-using folkies."

Well snuffy, as someone who dropped out of his A levels, more or less got kicked off an engineering course, dropped out of 1 ond in computing, and twice (other circumstances rather than desire) at hnc level and have no qualifications other than O-Levels, I guess I'm highly qualified as an academic user! ;-)

That said, yes, using a command line does tend to be difficult for people only or mostly used to point and click. I largely put myself into the mostly used to category BTW although I did at least have the "fortune" of using CP/M and DOS before encountering a graphical environment.