...They really have to look to the novice user as the future and plan their user interface accordingly.
You've made up your mind, and I'm certainly not going to try to change it. I comment on this only for other people who may read this thread...
On Ubuntu, the installation was all GUI. My day to day interaction with the OS is all GUI. The installation of new programs and updates is just point and click. It has menus, and all the things that you have learned and loved from Windows...
The only time I've used the terminal, is when I got myself into trouble on a couple of things, and I simply followed the instructions that some kind folks on the Ubuntu forums helped me out with. And then, it was just cut and paste the instructions that were provided to me into the terminal, and hit "enter".
Now granted, you can be a purist, and run everything from the terminal, but you certainly don't have to with modern day desktop Linux. I too came from DOS, so I'm not afraid of screwing things up using a terminal, but I'm at the age where if I learn something new, I have to forget something old.
I have no intention of using Linux in terminal mode. The GUI works great. As I've said many times on this forum, I don't care how the box works, as long as it works, and it does. Linux has been great.