linuxmemes

" i shouldn't have to memorize commands"

the up arrow:

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.

I use Linux and I prefer GUIs. I'm the kind of person that would rather open a filemanager as superuser and drag and drop system files than type commands and addresses. I hope you hax0rs won't forget that we mere mortals exist too and you'll make GUIs for us 🙏🙏🙏

Are there people who are mad at other people for using the terminal? Is this really a thing that exists?

i dont use the terminal to be productive, i use it to feel like a hacker

That’s it, I need to hook up a controller to my PC so I can open Htop with a button press

The only thing worse than reading documentation/tutorials about how to do things in GUIs is writing documentation about how to do things in GUIs. It's just screenshot after screenshot. And following it is like playing a ScummVM game, only less fun and lots more alt+tabbing.

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

Having started out in programming before the GUI era, typing commands just feels good to me. But tbh Linux commands really are ridiculously cryptic - and needlessly so. In the 1980s and 90s there was a great OS called VMS whose commands and options were all English words (I don't know if it was localized). It was amazingly intuitive. For example, to print 3 copies of a file in landscape orientation the command would be PRINT /COPIES=3 /ORIENTATION=LANDSCAPE. And you could abbreviate anything any way you wanted as long as it was still unambiguous. So PRI /COP=3 /OR=LAND would work, and if you really hated typing you could probably get away with PR /C=3 /O=L. And it wasn't even case-sensitive, I'm just using uppercase for illustration.

The point is, there's no reason to make everybody remember some programmer's individual decision about how to abbreviate something - "chmod o+rwx" could have been "setmode /other=read,write,execute" or something equally easy for newbies. The original developers of Unix and its descendants just thought the way they thought. Terseness was partly just computer culture of that era. Since computers were small with tight resources, filenames on many systems were limited to 8 characters with 3-char extension. This was still true even for DOS. Variables in older languages were often single characters or a letter + digit. As late as 1991 I remember having to debug an ancient accounting program whose variables were all like A1, A2, B5... with no comments. It was a freaking nightmare.

Anyway, I'm just saying the crypticness is largely cultural and unnecessary. If there is some kind of CLI "skin" that lets you interact with Linux at the command line using normal words, I'd love to know about it.

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.

meanwhile Windows users: let me drop into this random strangers discord who claims he will make my PC faster by dropping this .bat file that will run thousands of commands to "debloat" my install. also let me edit the registry and add random values to keys that I don't know what they're used for. this process is basically irreversible because I will inevitably forget which keys I've edited over time, wow windows is so simple and easy and intuitive 🤡

Lol, meme's backwards

CLI evangelists try to shit on GUI constantly, as though it makes them better at computers. It doesn't, kids

Can see it in this very thread

CLI is effective because every command serves a specific purpose. UIs are the opposite, you have to imagine all possible intentions the user could have at any given point and then indicate possible actions, intuitively block impossible actions, and recover from pretty much any error.

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

CLI is being able to speak a language to tell your computer what to do; GUI is only being able to point and grunt.

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.

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....

CLI this, GUI that. Where are my TUI degens?

Yesterday I showed a local business owner how he could set up the signboards and menus in his shop using a raspberry pi. The guy is a windows guy. the second he saw the boot screen he balked. I told him they needed to be set up one time and the rest of the time he could manage them with a windows program (winscp). I don't expect to hear back.

They fear CLI.

Another local guy had a huge archive of forestry images. They were all folders that had been renamed for the location and time they were taken but underneath they were all the standard filenames you get from a digital camera. It was nearly twenty years of pictures and he was getting five figure quotes to rename them all to match the folder names. I told him I could build a script to do it so he brought me one of his backups and I promptly did it using CLI before I was going to build a script. The next day he calls to say he talked it over with one of his vendors and they decided to drop their price down to a two thousand dollars. He wasn't interesting in me doing it. I hung up and a few years later when he called me to come fix something someone had messed up I hung up again.

I have no doubt the people he was talking to did something similar probably using bash scripts. So now when I tell someone I can sort out their file naming or some other sorting task I don't let them see how I do it.

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 mean, the reverse is also true, people have memorized which buttons, menus, etc they need to click/drag with do be productive. Sometimes i m OK with all the clicking, but most times I just want to do the thing now.

Type 3 words or click through 9 context menus. 😅

Perception: "the CLI is scary and hard to use" Reality: "computer, install gimp" "yessir, that'll be 141MB, is that okay?"

Are the "Windows evangelists" in the room with us right now? Every Windows admin I know hates Microsoft with a burning rage. Literally the only people I've ever seen promote Windows are being paid to do it.

Counterintuitively, that's one reason I like dealing with Windows: the community knows what it is and doesn't pretend otherwise, like some other more "zealous" fan bases.

I'm more impressed that they can use a gamepad for CLI input.

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

Memorize? Nah.
I search through my endless command history with fzf and look up commands I don’t remember with cheat.sh

It's is not either or. Also good cli require an eye for design just like gui. Lots of cli suck because there is no eye.

On CLI I figure out the command I need once.

Put it in a script.

Cron it if I want it to be daemonized.

Never think about it ever again.

Anti-CLI folks just have a bad workflow.

They see the script as the end, when in reality it's a foundation. I rarely look at my foundation. I build on it.

With this workflow I have dozens, hundreds, or thousand of automatic actions that "just work". Idk, works for me.

That said, if you prefer to click yourself to RSI to accomplish the same task, who am I to judge. I just watch and nod until I'm asked for a suggestion.

Whenever someone cries about the command line, I just post the link to Cookie clicker for the mousers out there