GUI is a generic swiss army knife. It’s easy to introduce to someone, and it has a whole array of tools ready for use. However, each of those tools is only half-decent at its job at best, and all of the tools are unwieldy. The manual is included, but it mostly tells you how to do things that are pretty obvious.
CLI is a toolbox full of quality tools and gadgets. Most people who open the box for the first time don’t even know which tools they’re looking for. In addition, each tool has a set of instructions that must be followed to a T. Those who know how to use the tools can get things done super quickly, but those who don’t know will inevitably cause some problems. Oh, but the high-detail manuals for all the tools are in the side compartment of the toolbox too.
Nothing wrong with CLI. It is fast and responsive.
Unless you want mainstream use. Because the majority of people can’t even use a UI effectively. And CLI is much worse.
Terminal is fun. I like being hackerman
I do most of my work at the command line, my co-workers do think I’m nuts for doing it, but one of our recent projects required us all to log into a client’s systems, and a significant portion of the tasks must be done via bash prompt. Suddenly, I’m no longer the team weirdo, I’m a subject matter expert.
People can do whatever they like, and heck I find CLI intimidating sometimes, but I’m always learning something new a little bit at a time.
I’m tired of seeing it in every field of interest that has any kind of payoff, whether art or FOSS.
“I’m [(almost always) a guy] who (maybe has kids and) has a job. I stopped learning anything after I got my job-paper / degree / highschool diploma. I shouldn’t have to learn anything anymore. I am happy to shell out disposable sad-salary-man money (and maybe my soul idk) to any mega-corp that offers me a “create desired outcome button” without me having to think too much. It’s [current year]! I shouldn’t have to think anymore! Therefore Linux is super behind and only for nerds and I desire its benefits so much that I leave this complaint anywhere these folks gather so they know what I deserve.”
Agh. I gotta go before this rant gets too long lol
Did a process last week that took me 13 steps in the command line that took about an hour. If I’d have done it manually it would have taken days. After I worked out how to do it I trimed it down to 6 steps and sent it to my coworker that also needs that information. His eyes glazed over on step two of explaining it to him and he’s just going to keep doing it his way…
Tbh the terminal is super convenient. No random UI placement. Most things follow one of several conventions so less to get used to. It’s easy to output the results of one command into another making automation obvious, no possibility for ads. It’s pretty sweet
I’ve never met any windows evangelists to be honest. Lots of Apple evangelists though who will spend forever talking about windows. Every developer I’ve met who uses Windows always had a tongue in cheek sort of “well it kind of sucks in some ways but it’s what I’m used to, one day maybe I’ll get off my ass and change OS”.
Reminds me of the “I use Arch Linux btw” meme which doesn’t really happen as much anymore other than as a joke. Also, I use Arch Linux btw
Didn’t even know there were such a thing as evangelists for Windows
I feel like a lot more people be comfortable using the terminal if the text displayed when it was first opened gave you a list of commands to try. There is a very steep initial learning curve immediately which discourages experimentation, and I think that with a little bit of effort you could get a lot of people over that hump and then they could enjoy terminal Bliss.
My guy, it’s because you’re the vegans of tech.
Nobody cares. It doesn’t need to be your personality.
I have literally never seen whatever this post is referring to
People just don’t want to confess that they are feared from that little black box that apparently kills your whole machine, if you just type a wrong letter having a terminal open. 🤗
As always,
not enough education in society.If more people would be brave to test it, more people would see that they can interact like this, better. And some, like me, appreciate the hard work GUI designers do, to make stuff more intuitive in the cost of efficiency
I love GUI with integrated terminal, tho, like dolphin
There are Windows evangelists?? 🤦🏽♀️
Just the other day, I was trying to run a CLI program, one I won’t name.
I’m trying out a new immutable distro, and couldn’t install it, so I said hey these new flatpaks are supposed to be all a guy could ever need.
So I downloaded an app that uses this unnamed CLI program as its core. It was a GUI app. And while it worked just fine, I also had very little control over what exactly was gonna happen and how it would happen. I wanted to do some specific things I knew the core program could do, but there was no way to do it.
Eventually I dug deeper and realized I’m an idiot and the CLI program can run without installing it or any dependencies, so it was fine to use natively. I was able to accomplish my task quickly and efficiently after that, happy as a clam.
CLI and GUI both have their place. I prefer GUI most the time, honestly. But having some CLI chops can be extremely useful at times.
