My favorite example of the use of both are PDFs:
- I'll use Stirling-PDF to insert/replace pages in specific places, rotate, move pages, etc. I like to visually understand what I'm doing.
- I'll use
pdfunite
to merge PDFs.
Hint: :q!
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My favorite example of the use of both are PDFs:
pdfunite
to merge PDFs.It's all a matter of preference anyway (assuming you have both options anyway). CLI is less intuitive and takes longer to learn, but can be wicked fast if you know what you're doing. GUI is more intuitive and faster to pick up, but digging through the interface is usually slower than what a power user can accomplish in the CLI.
It depends on what your use case is and how you prefer your work flow. The only dumb move is judging how other people like their setup.
I use both Windows and Linux. I also mess around with github programs here and there and they almost all require use of a command line to install or manipulate. And because a command line intrinsically is going to inform you way too little or way too much about what you are doing I end up having way more technical issues because I don't realize I'm missing a dependency or I glazed over an error that popped up in a sea of text during installation.
Linux's leaning on CLI is good for extremes: ultra-techy programmers and perfectionists and the exact opposite: people who just want internet and a word processor (who will install like basically nothing anyway so CLI wont bother them and probably keep them from breaking something in a GUI settings page).
People in the middle who are semi-techy end up annoyed because if they want to do some middle of the road changes to their system they have to use a command line or even code something themselves. Instead of just using a search engine to find the 1 out of a billion different little windows based applications that already exist to do the small yet very specific thing to a "good enough" level. Which just requires a minute or two of internet research, clicking download, waiting a bit, then installing a thing. Some of those tasks you can do while doing something else.
Or yes, maybe they end up needing to edit an ini file or a registry file (very rarely in the latter case).
Basically I'm talking about tech users that always use the path of least resistance rather than the most advanced or custom. People who want to do 20% of the work to get 80% of the results.
Even if it was less productive, I would insist on it, because it's just more fun.
CLI is being able to speak a language to tell your computer what to do; GUI is only being able to point and grunt.
Sometimes you just want to move a file from folder to another.
Thatβs why file managers, but cp filename folder name is probably quicker if you are already in the terminal
Would be awesome if there was more software to bridge the gap between CLI and GUI workflows. trash-cli
and dragon-drop
are pretty useful to that extent, but there is still much that could work better. I want files I've touch
ed in bash to appear in the "Recent" section in the GTK filepicker, and stuff like that.
mv a/foo b/bar
π€·
Definitely not hating if you find the GUI more intuitive. I'm not going to say I use terminal for everything. For instance, I'm using a graphical web browser right now!
But the more you get comfortable with CLI, the easier it becomes to expand your daily usage to include more and more.
Memorize? Nah.
I search through my endless command history with fzf and look up commands I donβt remember with cheat.sh
Perception: "the CLI is scary and hard to use" Reality: "computer, install gimp" "yessir, that'll be 141MB, is that okay?"
That is an oversimplification and you know it. Why is it so hard for CLI people to be honest?
Installing software on the command line is often a nightmare, requiring multiple commands and throwing error messages that you can only find mention of in one unresolved thread on some obscure forum somewhere.
Plus, there are so many different commands that you have other CLI users saying that they need to pull up reference tools to remember how to do different actions. I have only ever needed to that once or twice ever for GUIs.
Get real.
Uhhh, maybe if we are talking about back in like 2001?
I literally manage a fleet of linux end user machines and i can't remember the last time installing software was more than just "pacman -Syu (yes they run arch BTW)
Why are anti cli people so dishonest about how hard it is? Now, if you are trying to get involved in like machine learning or something then yes that's an absolute nightmare of errors and installing python packages and other nonsense but that's true no matter what platform you're on and whether you have a GUI or not. Even all the fancy gui installers for stuff like stable diffusion are a constant nightmares of I'm not working because fuck you that's not unique to cli
Unless you use Fedora, because I have decided that dnf stands for "do not fucking" so you tell your computer do not fucking install Firefox and then it does it anyway because it has Authority issues
CLI this, GUI that. Where are my TUI degens?
Htop is TUI indeed
I love btop, too, though I tried out gotop and it was actually pretty slick.
Then there's my love, Midnight Commander, but Yazi, Ranger, and Superfile are all great alternatives. TUI file managers are the best compromise between the dangerous sudo rm
and the sometimes overbearing GUI file managers.
I use GUI and CLI evenly and TUI really hits that sweet spot for me.
TUI gang rise up
You're not Neo.
Use a UI like a grown up
I'm in πΆ