Linux

One could ask in return "why do you use a mouse". The answer is probably "I've always done it this way" and not "after trying out different methods it's the one that i prefer".

I usually use that to install updates.

Everyone’s different idk. I myself love command line. I have enjoyed Linux for a long time but it didn’t really become my daily driver until recently. I find it very rare that I use the GUI for more than gaming and watching stuff. Everything else is command line. I’ve had friends refuse to try Linux due to the “requirement” of needing to do stuff in command line. When I showed them some newer distros that appeal to users who don’t really feel comfortable with command lines.

To be honest I hardly use it. I'm on Linux Mint Debian Edition and the built in updater does a great job. So I find myself never using the terminal

Even back in the day when I still used Windows (and GUI almost exclusively) I browsed my filesystems like I'd use a terminal with tab-completion. I'd press the first few letters of the file/directory I was looking for and press enter, rinse and repeat. I knew my file organization by heart anyway. It's only natural for me to drop the GUIs for such use cases.

It just works

I can use Fish’s history to jog my brain on actions I don’t quite remember. Remembering a sequence of screen menus to click thru is often much more tedious & error-prone. And when you have a commonly repeated process, it’s trivial to script because shell scripts are, well, scripts for that terminal shell.

Also the terminals applications are hella portable. I can use ssh/mosh over the network & have a similar or exact environment as my main PC on a remote box. vi was always a good enough editor.

Nice choice. Try to stick to the standard repository, kinda like the Play store on android.

I believe Mint tries to have minimal dependence on the command line. But usually it's easier to help others solve problems with the command line since that is easier to write out than how to click through menus. So don't let it scare you too much.

The internet is a friendlier place now, at least in the linux help-o-sphere. People don't let others post destructive "lessons" for people to learn anymore.

That was comment I wrote in a thread about distro recommendations. I think it provides a context in which CL has a clear advantage over GUI.

terminal is just faster sometimes

I think about it like a tree structure for both. With a gui you have to move your mouse around to various places, with a cli each character branches off into another tree. Mathematically you can handle more options faster with a CLI.

I use the terminal in a variety of circumstances (like working on Node.js and other programming projects) where there is either no good GUI alternative or using a CLI is actually faster. I've been using computers since 1989 and my first operating system was MS-DOS, so the thought of using a CLI when necessary doesn't bother me.

Why not? It's simple, lightweight, has a lot of interesting commands that fills its respective niche really well (btop, for instance) and (the best of all) it doesn't explode my PC everytime I run such commands.

Can get much more done rather than navigating desktop and gui's.. Also I'm a sucker for tui's,

Ranger,

Rtorrent-ps,

Nvtop,

Gotop,

Gomuks,

Even greetd tui implementation,

And much more.

It's easy and fun

Because there is no native gui. For most things to configure in Linux there is a webui but not a simple Gui built in. Configuration files like squid.conf smb.conf nginx.com... then we have logs but here I think I never checked for a Gui, does it work for remote ssh easily? Can you restart service easy?

It's just way faster for me most of the time. I can hit F12, do what I need, and be done without messing around with a mouse or touchpad.

Lynx is faster 😎

Scriptability.

Commands form a language (together with the scripting lang of choice) and if you want something very particular to happen, describing it is often easier than conveying it with pictures.

For example changing the way files are named, but only for certain files with different properties and in a very non-straightforward way, can be easy with a little preprocessing, regex and vars, but very hard with any bulk-rename tool.

The CLI was there first. GUIs are still catching up.

1. Update and install apps
2. Edit my host file
3. Neofetch

For simple tasks you don't need CLI. Most GUIs implement basic workflows and do a reasonable job at it (obviously not counting the ridiculous amount of time Windows needs to "compute space requirements" while deleting an empty directory. Seems it's more important to get that little popup on screen and run the animation a few times than actually doing the job).

It's when you get past the basics that CLI comes into its own. Those grindy things you do in Windows clicking one thing at a time? Glue a couple of commands together in the CLI and it's done in a tiny fraction of the time.