RollyShed wrote: ⤴Thu Jun 24, 2021 11:27 pm
If I want an app I go to the Software Manager and download it. Quick and easy and it works so why not use it?
Or what else would you use?
You mean a lot of typing in the Terminal? Why?
Your post is one asked by many who don't 'get' the terminal workflow. I understand — I disagree, but I understand. I remember when I started out with Linux almost 7 years ago, I had a similar attitude.
The terminal is often the most
efficient and
direct way in which to communicate with the 'machine'. The 'terminal' is a stone's throw away from programming languages*, something we have used for years and will continue to use for many more years until AI can do it all for us; I'm not insane, by the way, this is actually possible.
Before Windows, Microsoft started with MS-DOS — a command-line interface — only to move on to GUIs and
still provide and make ample use of MS-DOS for many years. Even now, Microsoft have created Powershell, which they made to combat the obvious success of the terminal in Linux. Need I also point out that the terminal is available and also sees ample use in Apple's computers?
If anything, we partly
devolved by relying so much on GUIs for everything; the act of pointing, swaying the mouse around like a drunk long past his welcome, clicking with all the accuracy of an elite sniper, trying to micromanager overlapping and misaligned windows, looking for shapes with the image resembling the desired task, etc. Sometimes, when I use a GUI, I feel like I'm stuck gesticulating, rather than simply using words like "make a directory!"
There are man(1) pages, info(1) pages,
--help
flags, classes available, free self-teaching material on YouTube, and fantastic eBooks for zero currency. For the same reason you have to learn how to use Windows, you also have to learn to use Linux. I mention this because you also have to learn the environment of the terminal.
I would argue that the terminal is perhaps the most intuitive part of computing in Linux; it's almost as intuitive as the languages we speak to one another. What isn't intuitive, is flapping our arms around and grunting. I'm exaggerating to make my point clearer, but there it is.
That's ultimately why I live in terminals.
* The shell — be it BASH, DASH, ZSH, KSH, TCSH, etc — itself being a programming language as well as a command interpreter.