I’ve been at risk for carpal tunnel before, which is why I primarily use a keyboard.
…on a GUI.
Linux is great for a lot of things but so many open-source apps are terrible about giving you a visual interface for something, and then letting you use your keyboard to navigate it. Granted, Windows has steadily enshittified its lead on that front as well.
I don’t really care. GUI or Cli, it don’t matter. But sometimes GUIs are far better even in Linux.
A real gripe I have with the Cli is when you install nVida drivers in Fedora from the terminal. Whether you are newb or a grizzled veteran of the Unix wars, you are going to enter, (or copy and paste for newbies), all the proper commands and things will go well until you get to the very end. When you are all done entering all the commands it says to reboot and you are looking at that blank blinking cursor, you would think you were done and ready to go.
But if you are in a hurry and missed the ‘fine print’, you probably missed the part where it says to wait for a while like 5 minutes or more BEFORE you can reboot. And no one knows how long for sure because the computer is recompiling your new kernel.
So there you sit, staring at your screen and a blank, blinking cursor without the slightest hint when the compile is done and wondering if it’s safe to reboot. Me, I go make a cuppa and go look out over the lake for a while. But it catches the beginners at least once.
Bring on the GUI and a bloody progress bar!
I type like a chimp throwing bananas at a keyboard. GUIs prevent the inevitable “command not found” oopsie.
That’s weird, other package systems have that solved by recompiling the kernel as a post-update hook that the update command waits for before exiting.
Seems like a bug that fedora’s packaging system doesn’t work like that.
I guess it’ll be a thing of the past when all systems use the new open source Nvidia driver, but there are still a lot of GPUs out there that aren’t supported by it.
I like well ordered man pages.
Me too bro. Me too
In the same way some GUIs are trash, lord have mercy some CLIs are trash. Things like adding two verbose flags makes it extra verbose. Things like the parameter order mattering. Yeesh. It can be rough. It really varies tool by tool.
two verbose flags makes it extra verbose
tcpdump intensifies
But what tool did you have in mind?
The main advantage of CLI is that its easier to instruct people on what to do and easier to get answers from people about how to use a CLI, and you can copy paste. If you know how to use the GUI though it can be a powerful tool as well.
I like GUIs if they aren’t web browsers pretending to be a desktop applications.
The controversial opinions come in the form of “GUI is better than CLI” or vice-versa. I prefer the efficiency of keyboard-only navigation/usage, but I think GUIs are cool af and a great way to be noob-friendly
Linux has GUIs for any setting you could need.
Windows has the registry and random PowerShell commands from the internet if the setting is even something you can change.
Depends on what I’m doing. Some things I prefer cli. Some things GUI is easier or quicker. There’s no wrong way to do anything.
I have a good example of “both are useful” on my second screen right now, but it’s a difference in output and not input. I was watching system resource utilization a few minutes ago while running something, so I have plasma’s graphical System Monitor on half the screen while I have a big ole terminal window with htop running next to it.
The GUI side uses the speed and bandwitdth of our visual processing to communicate complex historical data about a handful of values very quickly. It does it with graphs that, while accurate and to scale, are a bit analog and imprecise feeling to the eye.
The text-based side uses the speed and bandwidth of the hardware to show me a huge 2D array of values that constantly updates. It does it with monospaced text in a high-readability font that is very clear and precise.
The GUI does more processing on the computer first to communicate quickly about the targeted values, while the text side leaves more of that processing to be done on my end. But that’s not a negative, because I can search through those hundreds of values as quickly as my eyes can dart around the screen. There’s no navigating a GUI that quickly.
In general when it comes to GUI vs CLI, I like GUIs too. I am just old enough that I remember how awesome it was to start using graphical desktops and file managers and computer mice and all that. But I’m an engineer who uses the terminal every single day, and I often just leave it open when I’m at work with a bunch of monitors. To me, any decent computer must have a powerful CLI and text-based configuration and scripting and all that.
For most USERs, the GUI is all that matters. And since the GUI needs to be simple and rock solid, it can be advantageous to just leave the arcane shit in the text files and not try to cram everything into the GUI. If I want to change my screen resolution, system fonts, or change my network connection, I expect to find that in the GUI and I’ll just go there. But when I want to be the dork customizing the colors on my GRUB screen or tweaking the swap/cache behavior of my OS, I’m quite glad to edit text for those.
the speed and bandwitdth of our visual processing
That’s really it. Some things need the bandwidth of visual processing, but others are more efficient at the lower, more specific bandwidth of a CLI. Think of drawing a picture. You could do it with a CLI. Lord knows I’ve figured out how to do it to process image uploads. But unless you’re doing it over and over again it’s way easier to use a GUI to do it.
Then again, if you have to rename an arbitrary number of files to a specific convention you want the ability to automate it, and with that many bits flowing - imagine the bandwidth of a 8.29 million pixels, each with 250,000 colors - it’s really difficult to pick which bits in the stream to flip.
I CAN interact with CLI, but i WANT to interact with good GUI. I don’t want to learn CLI commands when I don’t have to. Especially in the cases where I use it rarely
Are you kidding? There’s nothing I love more than hand typing a 400 character file path.
Yeah and that’s totally fair enough, but people who like using a command line and know the tools well rarely if ever have to type out long paths or commands. Tab completion and history suggestion (especially in a modern shell like fish or zsh) is a joy to use, and doesn’t just do file paths but command options and arguments. Man pages are very overwhelming at first, but if you’re practiced at scanning them, then it’s a lot more convenient to get the info right where you are than to navigate to another window. But the learning curve is steep and I get why someone wouldn’t want to bother.
Tab?
let’s compromise with a TUI
I like GUIs for a handle of simple on and off options. Like quick connect to VPN.
Don’t let random nerds on the internet make you feel any way about how you use Linux. Live your life and be happy. There’s too much bullshit in the world to pay attention to jerks with keyboards.
