It would be nice if the interface could walk you through those first few steps you need to take when you're getting introduced to a version control system. Some explanation would be nice. A "Pull" function would also be handy, not to mention some graphics to show where you are in the tree.
The biggest thing that would be needed, however, are some better error messages. Yes, "non fast-forward" is true and descriptive, but a little short for beginners. They are left thinking things like "What is a fast-forward? Why isn't it a fast-forward? Can you just make it work?".
I've looked into changing those error messages (and maybe making the system more internationalized) but they are hard-coded in git's source code, and are not easy to track down.
You're right. There's remote->fetch, but no pull. Weird.
The interface of git seems to assume that you're familiar with the underlying concepts. The official docs and tutorials are pretty good nowadays, but I can see how the interface itself really doesn't give you many clues. (I was already familiar with hg when I started using git, so I picked it up quite quickly.)
Coming up with a newbie-friendly interface has probably been a much, much lower priority than getting the underlying system working well, which is pretty typical of Unix culture. Writing good GUIs can be quite hard, and moreover, takes a very different skill set than most programming does. (GUIs like this (http://www.ok-cancel.com/comic/4.html) are ... not helpful.)
> The biggest thing that would be needed, however, are some better error messages.
While I emphatically agree with you, in all fairness, everything needs better error messages. (Have you ever used OCaml? Yeesh!)
I'm fine with the command-line interface, but for sake of argument, I'm curious what you think the UI should be like.