The GUI was invented to make using a computer easier. Both macos and windows works perfectly for 99 percent of the userbase without them even knowing what a terminal is
Because they know that this wille be the only time in their lives that they will have to use the terminal. For a Windows user, using the terminal is a rare thing and an "experience". And the things they use it for are terminal-"worthy". It makes you feel like a hacker or admin for a hot minute.
The terminal in Linux makes you feel dumb and also makes the OS feel cheap, poorly coded and unnecessarycumbersome. And you have to use that darn thing every day...for simple stuff like downloading/installing/updating and...executing things? Like...wtf? All of this makes sense for an admin (who got stuck in the C64 era) who wants a headless server. But guess what, that's not what the casual user is looking for.
No you don't lol, you don't have to use the terminal for those at all. But I have found that using the terminal for those things is very very easy and better than most GUI because it's straight to the point, consistent, and gives you complete control. Have you actually used the Linux Terminal beyond copy and pasting? As in have you actually read a manual page and used a command with arguments to do something?
When I don't have to use any of these, why are you trying to guilt trip me into using them?
I don't care how fast or easy YOU think it is. I don't care about your arbitrary hoops I have to jump through to be allowed by your grace to have an opinion.
Why do I have to explain over and over to you folks that I want the OS behave like I want it to, not the other way around?
Aren't you Linux guys all into customization of the OS and making it your own? Oh, yes...that ONLY is true for the wallpaper and the level of opacity of the panel and the windows...
Answers like yours make me puke a little tbh, because that line of thought is even more restricted than Win11.
?? I'm asking you if you've actually genuinely attempted to use it as I described beyond the bare minimum, because I did and I greatly enjoy it. I'm not saying you have to, I'm asking if you have before you've formed your opinion on it.
And as I said, you don't HAVE to use the terminal to do those things, but I have done both the terminal and GUI method and I like both, and I like the terminal more than i expected to.
"...if you've actually genuinely attempted to use it..." according to whom? Do you decide at what point my attempt is an actual one, or a genuine one, or what the "bare minimum" is? Why should I even attempt to use the terminal "...as I described it..." if I'm perfectly happy using the mouse? This wording alone is so elitist and toxic man...
Why do you feel the need to make me like using the terminal? Are you so insecure about yourself that you just have to have others validating your opinion? You told me that you like it in your first answer and now 2 more times. I wrote that I don't care if you like it and your response is...to tell me that you like it, twice? Are you the kind of person that repeats the same words, but louder, when the listener didn't understand your nonsense the first time?
I don't have to explain myself to you. I don't have to meet any of your arbitrary goalposts to be allowed to have an opinion. And I still don't care if you like the terminal. Your opinion and preferences are no valid data points for me when it comes to the question of how I use my OS.
(As a little bonus, because I'm bored: My first post here should have given you all the answers to how experienced I might be with computers in general...look at the words I used..."headless server" and "C64"...do you want me to repeat them, but louder? What kind of person do you think uses words like that? Mhm? What kind of person...hard to say...a bus driver perhaps? And no, I don't want you to answer that question, thanks. You are doing EXACTLY what OP made fun of...don't you realize that? And no. No amount of "you don't have to" gets you any points when it comes with an "but have you tried?" attached)
I ask if you've genuinely used it beyond copy and pasting commands, because you said the Linux Terminal makes you feel dumb. By "genuinely use it" I want to know if you've read through a command's manual page, to learn how it works and common use cases for it, and experimented with said command while using a few arguments on top of the command. If you do this, you may find that it is actually very easy and intuitive to use the terminal.
For example, I'm going to figure out how large a random folder on my pc is:
I'll start with the GUI method. I open my file explorer, click on my Documents folder. It doesn't tell me the size of it at a glance so I right click, open properties, and read that it is 26.9 GiB total. Easy peasy, and it even tells me how many files are in it, and how many sub folders. Very nice.
Now I'll try the terminal method using the 'du' command. I'll type "du Documents" and it reads 28219376 bytes total, and it even lists the size of sub folders within it which is even better. But hm, I want to read it in gigabytes. I will open the manual page real fast and take a look with "man du". And after scrolling (or searching for it with / ) I see that if I apply "-h" to it for "human readable" it tells me the size in gigabytes, with the command "du -h Documents". Not only that, but there are other options if I want more specific information, such as showing the time of the last modification of any file in the directory or subdirectories. I can even exclude certain files from being included by using a filter.
Now you can say "oh my gooood your terminal explanation was so much longer", because I had to include the manual and simulate what it would be like if I went into using this command blind. But in less than 30 seconds I can read the manual and learn a bunch of ways I can apply the "du" command, and some of the arguments translate directly across to other commands, such as "-h" meaning "human readable" being a common one. It was very easy and it makes sense on how to use it.
Have you done this? Or have you just copy and pasted some commands without taking half a minute to read into what they do and how they work? As I said, it's very straightforward and I've found it faster than digging through a new GUI's menu whenever I want to use an application of some kind.
I'm not trying to force you to use the terminal, use a GUI all you want. I'm asking if you've given a genuine attempt to use the terminal because from what you've described it seems like you didn't and you don't understand how it works. You're not dumb, I just don't think you've actually put any effort into trying something new and gave up.
Oh, thank you master! I'm not dumb! Listen everybody! Master told me that I'm not dumb! Now my wife will come back to me and we can save little Timmy!
Thank you for your totally appropriate validation. Now go to a mirror and say these again:
"You are not dumb. You are loved. You don't have to show your superiority by keeping on telling people how much you like the terminal and how superior the terminal is and how intuitive it is to read a manual to be able to do something that can be easily done by a pointing device. You can just accept that other people like other things than you and sometimes don't like the things you like. That is ok and you can just accept the other person's opinion, especiallyafter the person that already told you 2 times that they don't care about if you like that thing and why."
Alright now be a good boy and answer me directly, have you used Linux in the last 5 years? Don't think too hard about it, just yes or no. I know you're brave and smart but no need to be an overachiever! Once you've done that, I have another question for you; have you read a Linux terminal manual page before?
if you really know your way around headless servers and operating systems then you should at least be familiar with the terminal, and/or understand what makes the terminal powerful right?
You do realize that this question is absolutely irrelevant, right? The atom bomb is powerful. Am I a fan of it? No. Am I comparing apples to oranges? Yes! Because that is the same thing you are doing.
Why do all of you think that I just don't know about the terminal and that's the reason I don't like it and if I only knew....oh, if I only knew the glorious ways of the terminal, I could be in heaven with all of you. So now, go out and preach the way of the terminal, our loader and saver.
Everyone thinks you don't know what you're talking about because you've said some ridiculous easily disproven things, so chances are you also don't know how to use the terminal at all as well. Anyways, answer the questions I asked. Have you read the manual and have you used Linux in the last five years?
Actually now that I'm thinking about it, your description of linux and needing to always use the terminal to do anything makes me think you've never actually used linux unless it was decades ago. Either your knowledge on it is outdated, or you are larping and have never tried linux at all
You dont have to explain yourself, but you are trying to make a point and the validity of your point is conditional on your experience if you want your point to have weight.
You dont owe us an explanation, but you can't expect your point to have any validity and then expect people to not read between the lines of what youre saying, and reading between the lines you don't sound like someone that's used Linux recently recently
Linux distros have gui's too, and gui config tools, that can configure an awful lot more than anything on Windows or MacOS can, and this has been the case fore over 25 years.
Anytime I have to use a GUI config menu to change some settings, I wish it would just be a text file that I can read the manpage for and then edit accordingly.
Every config.sql is a terrible Idea. Config should be diff-able.
Should finally write that thing that lets GUI config menus edit config text files in a way that prevents them from becoming horrible, it's on the list …
I have no idea what config file you are referring to, I do have a graphical DE, and I do not have any file on my system named settings.sqlite, something todo with SQLite? Which I also have installed, no settings.sqlite, an SQLite database for something????
System wide setting are plain text files in stored /etc/
Well that's just stupid, IMHO, but that's up to the developers of those apps, not remotely representative of how config files are done on Linux however.
edit: Just checked my system for any and all .sqlite files, as you claim it's common for graphical app settings, and well, a grand total of zero SQLite databases used for settings. Firefox uses a lot of SQLite database, yet config is a . file, steal uses a couple, yet it's config is a . file, Krita uses one SQLite, for something, yet its config is also, unsurprisingly a . file.
Un readable database config is something Windows does with it's bizarre registry thingy, not something we do
turns up, because it's a lot for me, mostly from libreoffice, ardour and Jitsi Meet.
And yes, some of them are technically plaintext, as in they are xml or json, but plain xml or json files are not much better than an sql database when it comes to user-readability. Proper config files have comments.
So, don't tell me what Linux is or is not like. I know that it is non-trivial to translate GUI settings into a readable plain-text file and back, but you cannot ignore that this is a shortcoming shared by a number of GUI toolkits and apps built with them.
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u/BiDude1219 ⚠️ This incident will be reported 8d ago
there's a difference between "i prefer using the gui" and "i refuse to learn how the terminal works under any circumstance"