Why do you use the terminal?

Hi, everybody Recently, a guy noticed that I was using it and asked why? For me it because in Linux many things are done through the terminal because Linux has many different desktop environments

He also compared terminal commands with cheat codes in GTA and other games, he understands what benefits you take from them, but not from terminal commands

ThankYouVeryMuch,
@ThankYouVeryMuch@kbin.social avatar

For me the difference between a cli and a gui is like asking someone to do something speaking in a language they can understand and doing it just by pointing at things and doing gestures. It's enough for ordering at a restaurant, but for more complex tasks it gets ridiculous, even at a restaurant you'll get better results if you can ask for some information and understand what the server says

gratux,
@gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

it allows easy scripting. also for frequently used commands, i can just scroll up in the history, instead if clicking the same buttons over and over

dreugeworst,

Because you can’t (easily) program gui apps to automate tasks, but combining a few terminal programs to get more complex behaviour is really easy

callyral,
@callyral@pawb.social avatar

Not having to go through a bunch menus to do stuff, not using the mouse, having –help for commands…

Or just for simplicity. For example, I use simple commands to manage my files: mv, cp, ls, rm, mkdir, etc.

There’s also Neovim, my preferred editor, which runs on the terminal.

I prefer to use GUI for visual things, like drawing, since that’s what it’s best at.

FractalsInfinite,

Because Gui’s don’t show advanced options and so I know/understand exactly what is being done. (e.g. I would always use apt over mint’s package store so I could see what it did, how much time I had left, download multiple applications at once and see if the package made a random config file somewhere)

stoy,

I am on Windows as my workstation, but my servers run Linux, why should I install X/Wayland and VNC to manage my servers when even the later versions of Windows comes with an ssh client?

When I run linux with a gui, I mainly use the terminal as I sm more used to that rather than relearning a GUI.

Lmaydev,

Yeah I use WSL a huge amount of my work.

Azure for instance is much easier to work with in the console than the website.

Then there’s grep!

Dio9sys,

I like using the terminal because of 3 main reasons:

  1. I like using my keyboard
  2. I like doing multiple things in one window
  3. Verbosity

I’m pretty quick with typing, but sometimes I can’t see !y mouse at first, so it’s just faster for me to type out what I want to do as long as I know the right arguments for it.

My average workflow at work as me doing frequent saml logins and going between multiple kinds of databases. It’s just easier for me to run the saml cli command and then run the SQL CLI command I need instead of messing with datagrip settings and stuff. Also I recreationally run some servers and it’s just easier to ssh into the server, make the changes I need in something like nano or the redis CLI tools and then log back out. This means I’m just plain more comfortable on the terminal in certain situations like config editing, writing posts for my gemini capsule, etc.

Sometimes when I run a GUI program I’ll get big loud silence and don’t know what to do. In that case I genuinely enjoy using the terminal and running an equivalent command with verbosity settings so I can see what it’s doing or not and can track down any errors.

On top of those reasons, I’ve been playing with RISC-V architecture lately and, while the xorg riscv64 port is admirable, I just get better performance rn by running my RISC stuff through tty.

I recognize that not everybody is going to have the same use case and workflows as me, but I’m pretty comfortable with what I’ve got 😅

beeng,
  • verbosity

That mean you install powershell on linux?

Dio9sys,

No, I just run everything with -vvvvvvvvvv so I can see my computer yelling at me

beeng,

-vvvvvvvvv makes everything CAPS?

chitak166,

Because whatever I’m trying to do doesn’t have a GUI option yet.

digdilem,

Only one of the ~250 linux machines I maintain has a gui.

olafurp,

I run stuff in the terminal because it’s nicer than clicking. It’s like a shortcut-only way of interacting with the computer when you get into it.

I make aliases and bash functions for everything I do often and is tedious to type / click like running steam games.

vzq,

The terminal is the entire reason I use Linux. All the GUI stuff on Linux is average at best. The terminal is ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

RedBauble,

I really despise the use of the mouse, in some way it just feels somewhat wrong, especially the need to constantly move one hand between the mouse and the keyboard. Also I’m way faster at typing that I am pointing and clicking around looking for the right button to press. Terminal commands offer a simple and expressive way to interact with the computer.

randomaside,
@randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I just think it’s neat!

cmnybo,

I use a lot of programs and scripts that I wrote myself and most of the time I couldn’t be bothered to make a GUI for them.

bionicjoey,

Pipes are OP

kpw,

tar + netcat are really nice. Not very secure but gets a folder from A to B using standard tools.

bionicjoey,

ssh is probably better than nc for that.

azimir,

I live and die by ssh and scp. Sometimes rsync for larger moves.

Once you’ve got ssh for terminals (used to be x sessions too!), then port forwarding and socks proxies, add in scp for file moves, and layer in sshfs for whole file system mounts it’s a potential combo for remote work and network tunnels. Such a phenomenal toolkit.

bionicjoey,

Isn’t sshfs defunct now? I used to use it a lot.

xycu,

SSHFS is shipped by all major Linux distributions and has been in production use across a wide range of systems for many years. However, at present SSHFS does not have any active, regular contributors, and there are a number of known issues (see the bugtracker).

The current maintainer continues to apply pull requests and makes regular releases, but unfortunately has no capacity to do any development beyond addressing high-impact issues.

When reporting bugs, please understand that unless you are including a pull request or are reporting a critical issue, you will probably not get a response.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • linux@lemmy.ml
  • localhost
  • All magazines
  • Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #