I want to like Linux and leave Windows, but when I say that I don’t want to be forced to use CLI/terminal because I don’t live in the 1970s, people get angry at me.
Yes, eventually I learned how, but the vast majority of tutorials on how to install or do anything on Linux jump straight into it.
And as a software developer, a lot of tools I come across don’t have an official non-terminal installation option.
So here’s the thing: providing support is much easier on the command line.
Also if you think about it, insisting that people who provide support or documentation use the system the same way you want to use it so they can show you how to use it is pretty weird.
Hold on there: did you say you’re a software developer? Can you do us all a favour and put GUI-only on your CV?
OK, again, as a hiring manager I would really appreciate you stating your preference for GUI-based computing on there. It will save both of us a lot of time.
It’s a preference, and I may complain about it on social media, but I know things are how they are and I’m not so hung up on it as to let it affect my work.
Worst case I would take a few minutes between tasks to quickly whip up a GUI helper, but I think that in 10 years I only did it 2 or 3 times.
I installed Ubuntu in a VM to torrent with mulvad. I had to go to the command line. Worse was googling gave multiple contradictory instructions that further reading yielded “deprecated”.
I made it work because I’ve been doing it for 30 years. Anyone else would be better with Windows where it just works.
Huh, why not just use QBittorrent? I’ve never even felt the need to reach for the command line with torrents (Linux ISOs of course) because it works so well.
Yes it was QBitTorrent. The problem was getting mulvad out of the VM while letting QBitTorrent use a local network share to save files. I needed everything to be static ips.
Would you have been able to create your specific use case on Windows? Because most people don’t try “getting mulvard out of the VM”. That’s the type of thing that’s in my experience usually (I don’t know about this case specifically - that’s why I’m asking) a lot easier on Linux than on Windows (not that it’s easy)
The reason I brought it up was because it worked without problems in a Windows VM. But I really didn’t want to run Windows so I worked on Linux until it worked.
I’ve been using Linux for 30+ years so using a command line isn’t a problem. In fact my experience is a problem because my goto commands and config files have all been deprecated.
For example I immediately tried ifconfig. You’re probably too young to even know that command.
ifconfig was deprecated in 2009. I got into Linux in the last 10 years and still used ifconfig. Sure, it’s deprecated and no longer included in most modern installs, but you can still download and use it as before. A lot of guides online used ifconfig, so it’s a pretty common package for inexperienced users to download, even if deprecated.
Which is exactly what I said if you’d stop being hostile. I tried ifconfig, it wasn’t there. Googled saw instructions for both ifconfig and ip. Read more saw ifconfig deprecated. Saw /network/interfaces is deprecated. But when you Google it shows that and systemd information. As I said, I knew enough to know what I was reading and got it working.
been on Linux mint for a year now and the only time i use the terminal is to git push to update my website. so far, nothing else
I’ve been doing has needed the terminal.
does it? because I’ve looked and have only been able to find things that will tell me the status of my repository but not actually let me simply click a button to commit and push.
Keep in mind that if I actually try to look at github, my smoothbrain glazes over. I’ve only checked what’s available through my package manager. I probably should have included that in the previous comment.
Ah, I see. If you look up “Github Desktop” online it should have a Linux version. I haven’t actually used it outside of Windows, but I can’t imagine it’s missing committing/pushing to github, that’s the whole point of the app! And yeah, github can be pretty daunting initially, there’s a lot going on and it didn’t feel intuitive to me initially either. I wish I had better advice other than just stick with it, but that’s what I did so I don’t know of any good guides
I don’t want to be one of the people you think is angry at you, but I do want to proselytize a bit.
have you ever used a dedicated download manager? think of the terminal, first, as a dedicated download manager. All you do is type wget and then paste in the URL.
eventually, you may want to specify where the file goes, or what it’s named when you finally download it, or something else. then, you can look up which flags to add with wget -h
I suggest you try Linux, any flavor, but especially Debian or Debian variants. instead of thinking you need to learn to use terminal, just remember that you have a dedicated download manager called terminal.
The thing is you will eventually learn that the terminal does a lot more than called wget. and you already know how to get help, and add flags.
The CLI does some things so fast though. I myself like bypassing the gui and interacting more directly. Same reason I only drive manual cars and grind my own coffee (autistic?) But yes, I am glad linux has a gui and we shouldn’t force the cli on people who grew up with ipads.
ffmpeg is one of the things where I prefer the CLI. It’s crazy powerful, and does some insane things in pretty simple commands. I’ve seen a meme that says half the internet is just wrappers for ffmpeg, and I’m inclined to agree.
Also, as an arch user (btw) pacman / AUR are a much better experience than having to hunt down the installers for everything online.
Similarly, the right CLI tools make searching for files across my entire computer much simpler and way faster than I could ever do with a GUI
Find a friend with one, otherwise the key is to be smooth and really feel the clutch engagement. It’s different for every vehicle. Its a balance between clutch and gas. With a lower power car you’ll need more gas to balance while letting the clutch out. With an old manual truck, you pretty much need no gas input to get going because of torque. Another good way to learn could be just pick up an old g27 or g29 wheel (they have 3 pedals and a shifter either h pattern or paddles) and learn that way with a racing simple like LFS, Asetto Corsa, or Automobilista 2.
Depending where you live there’s all sorts of sub $800 manual cars. That’s how I learned (rusty $500 crx)
Not once in the 11 months and 3 updates I saw when still on my nVidia card did I need to use terminal for anything, as there’s a built-in program for that on Mint (and a couple other distros at least, looks like)
True. But do we have to include the NVidia disclaimer in every post about Linux adoption?
we do if people keep claiming things like
If all you do is web browse and play games, you should be able to use Linux without the CLI just fine.
or
Then don’t use the terminal. You don’t need it.
or
Silly to get angry about, because you can use Linux just fine without it. But the terminal is a powerful tool.
or
With flatpak/snap you don’t need to use terminal anymore.
The truth is that on a basic default install, even for a software engineer who maintains linux servers daily that you are going to encounter problems on linux that are much harder to solve than problems on other systems. And people want to pretend that it isn’t the case, because “I’ve been using linux for x years and never encountered that” (look at the other response to my comment besides yours for an explicit example of this). People want to say that all you need to do is learn to copy and paste from the internet, but 1. that’s a terrible idea, and 2. it doesn’t work half the time! An example of this is audio drivers! If your audio drivers don’t work, you’re probably just fucked. It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable in the terminal, it matters if the support exists at all for your system. Which you will not know until you actually install linux and spend hours trying to fix it.
It’s like people here refuse to believe that linux has problems, even for experienced users, because they think that it should be the norm to spend hours trying to resolve a problem on your computer that just … doesn’t happen on other systems. The thing is that other systems do have problems. They’re just not the literal show stopping problems that linux has. I’m literally unable to use my system because of Nvidia support and audio drivers. But mac and windows have other problems. For example my mac really struggles with my monitor usb hub in the back with usb-c passthrough. While my windows freezes when it tries to switch to dark mode, and blue screens once a month. Those things are resolved in seconds or minutes. But I literally cannot use my linux partition. It’s unusable. I’m not going to spend 50 more hours (i’ve already spent 48) trying to fix the damn issues to make the system literally usable.
I understand Linux is better for a lot of reasons. I want to switch to it. But I’m sick of people pretending like the issue is the user. It’s not. At least not a majority of the time. Linux as a whole is incredibly difficult to use if anything goes wrong. Because it’s not little things that go wrong. It’s big things.
But I’m sick of people pretending like the issue is the user.
Oh, it’s certainly not. Linux wasn’t accessible to ordinary users for years. But it usually is, today, finally. And we’re justifiably quite excited about that. Many of us worked very hard to get to this point.
But it’s not the users fault if something doesn’t work.
That said, it is absolutely the manufacturers fault, when Linux drivers aren’t available. We can’t fix that.
When we’re talking about a show stopping issue due to lack of hardware drivers, we need to remember to encourage new users to stick to the safe path of a manufacturer pre-installed OS.
The reasons Windows, Mac, IOS, and Android avoid those kinds of issues is that the hardware shipped with the OS pre-installed by the manufacturer, who tested very carefully for those issues. Linux does equally well on hardware designed to run Linux.
No operating system is going to be issue free on proprietary hardware that wasn’t created with that OS in mind. Making a Hackintosh is fun, but it’s a lousy way to become an Apple user.
Pre-installed Linux is now an option, and it is the best option for new Linux adoption. I think we need to be more vocal about that, to help folks avoid those issues.
OpenSUSE. People don’t seem to give it much love, but their system settings application YaST makes command line usage completely avoidable for average users. Even for power users, YaST makes command line usage optional rather than necessary for most tasks.
While this was true 10-15 years ago, nearly all popular distros include graphical configuration tools that are as good or better than Yast these days.
Cli usage on Linux is entirely optional these days on most Linux distributions, but once you learn a bit of cli use you actually realize that it can be a very helpful tool.
I don’t think anyone is arguing CLIs aren’t useful, pretty sure we all know that. It’s not like you see the l33t haxxorz in movies tearing through GUI windows. We’re saying we don’t want to have to rely on it to do stuff frequently, for one reason or another.
And as far as saying it’s optional, I must be a power user, because even on Ubuntu I felt I couldn’t do much of anything without opening CLI.
IMO one of Linux’ greatest follys is demanding perfection to the point where everyone just tries to make the superior way of doing things, then you end up with a mess of different ways to implement the same things. It’s like that joke about coding languages, each one meant to be the final perfect language. Like with installers, on Windows you’re generally going to get an exe, an msi, or some compressed file type that you just need to drag files into their location. Linux? I can’t even tell you how many different methods I’ve seen for installing various things, none of which seems to be the “standard”. Even compression seems to be way more all over the place, on Windows I only ever really see 7z, zip and rar, but I’ve seen a dozen different compression types for Linux files. That’s incredibly confusing for dumb people like me.
Wdym? Installing things on Linux is much simpler. There is exactly one preferred way: the application repository from the distribution with a nice GUI interface for it. File types of archives play no role in that and why would that even be relevant?
Windows only recently got something similar with the Microsoft store, and before is was a super confusing mess of lots of different types of installers and generally a huge security issue to run .exe files from unstrusted random internet downloads.
Your explanation sounds more like you are trying to use Linux like it was Windows XP. But Linux is not Windows… you are holding it wrong 😅
My most recent experience being Ubuntu, this feels like a joke. Have you used the Ubuntu store? And the suggestion that the Microsoft store is in any way good makes me question your entire comment, it’s absolute trash on top of garbage. This feels like a joke comment to me. Executables are a huge security risk for you? 🤣
Yes, the Windows store is crap, but it is still miles ahead of running random .exe installers.
And the Ubuntu store is like the worst possible example you could find 😱
Just any normal distribution repository from for example Debian or Fedora works great. And Gnome and KDE have very easy to use GUI interfaces for these and ideally Flathub is also integrated. Super easy and seamless, no joke at all.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on executables, I love them, would choose them every time over any app from the store, in fact I have zero apps from the store. I tried other stores on Ubuntu but they weren’t really better, just their own limited collections, I still ended up having to hunt down stuff and even use CLI.
When I need to run terminal, it’s because I’m following a specific guide to fix or setup something. It’s not much different than following a similar guide for Windows, except there might be a bit more copy+paste going on on Linux.
The omnipresent mentions of terminal also delayed my switch and it was completely unnecessary.
Yes, I eventually managed to learn how to do most stuff without the terminal, but almost all “How to do Whatever on Linux” tutorials immediately jump into it.
I know the terminal is more distro-agnostic, but even the distro-specific tutorials do it.
I want to like Linux and leave Windows, but when I say that I don’t want to be forced to use CLI/terminal because I don’t live in the 1970s, people get angry at me.
Then don’t use the terminal. You don’t need it.
Yes, eventually I learned how, but the vast majority of tutorials on how to install or do anything on Linux jump straight into it.
And as a software developer, a lot of tools I come across don’t have an official non-terminal installation option.
So here’s the thing: providing support is much easier on the command line.
Also if you think about it, insisting that people who provide support or documentation use the system the same way you want to use it so they can show you how to use it is pretty weird.
Hold on there: did you say you’re a software developer? Can you do us all a favour and put GUI-only on your CV?
.
For CLI programs I agree, but I’ve come across GUI programs for which the official installation instructions were CLI only (like Android Studio).
I’m not GUI-only, I just strongly prefer it. My CV does contain me having years of experience developing GUI programs.
OK, again, as a hiring manager I would really appreciate you stating your preference for GUI-based computing on there. It will save both of us a lot of time.
It’s a preference, and I may complain about it on social media, but I know things are how they are and I’m not so hung up on it as to let it affect my work.
Worst case I would take a few minutes between tasks to quickly whip up a GUI helper, but I think that in 10 years I only did it 2 or 3 times.
So you’re saying that you don’t want to put it on your CV?
I don’t think it’s relevant, I can use CLI and terminal just fine and if it’s required to do my job then so be it.
If all you do is web browse and play games, you should be able to use Linux without the CLI just fine.
I installed Ubuntu in a VM to torrent with mulvad. I had to go to the command line. Worse was googling gave multiple contradictory instructions that further reading yielded “deprecated”.
I made it work because I’ve been doing it for 30 years. Anyone else would be better with Windows where it just works.
This is the most Lemmy interaction I’ve seen in awhile:
…
…
I’m not complaining, just watching in admiration of you all.
Yeah, it’s kinda adorable to watch actually.
Huh, why not just use QBittorrent? I’ve never even felt the need to reach for the command line with torrents (Linux ISOs of course) because it works so well.
Yes it was QBitTorrent. The problem was getting mulvad out of the VM while letting QBitTorrent use a local network share to save files. I needed everything to be static ips.
Would you have been able to create your specific use case on Windows? Because most people don’t try “getting mulvard out of the VM”. That’s the type of thing that’s in my experience usually (I don’t know about this case specifically - that’s why I’m asking) a lot easier on Linux than on Windows (not that it’s easy)
The reason I brought it up was because it worked without problems in a Windows VM. But I really didn’t want to run Windows so I worked on Linux until it worked.
you haven’t been using torrents, Ubuntu, or VPNs for 30 years. why would you lie about that?
I’ve been using Linux for 30+ years so using a command line isn’t a problem. In fact my experience is a problem because my goto commands and config files have all been deprecated.
For example I immediately tried ifconfig. You’re probably too young to even know that command.
no… i still haven’t figured out what i’m supposed to use instead.
ifconfig was deprecated in 2009. I got into Linux in the last 10 years and still used ifconfig. Sure, it’s deprecated and no longer included in most modern installs, but you can still download and use it as before. A lot of guides online used ifconfig, so it’s a pretty common package for inexperienced users to download, even if deprecated.
Which is exactly what I said if you’d stop being hostile. I tried ifconfig, it wasn’t there. Googled saw instructions for both ifconfig and ip. Read more saw ifconfig deprecated. Saw /network/interfaces is deprecated. But when you Google it shows that and systemd information. As I said, I knew enough to know what I was reading and got it working.
Mate reread my comment. I’m not the one being hostile
Unfortunately I’m a software developer…
I can use a CLI, but I’d rather not.
Vibe coder? 😏
MORE REALISTIC MORE REALISTIC
You mean more cow bell?
Gross
You brought this on yourself, you realise that, right?
been on Linux mint for a year now and the only time i use the terminal is to git push to update my website. so far, nothing else I’ve been doing has needed the terminal.
Git does have a desktop version with a GUI, but the CLI is much simpler
does it? because I’ve looked and have only been able to find things that will tell me the status of my repository but not actually let me simply click a button to commit and push.
Oh, I assumed you were using github, my bad. There probably isn’t a good desktop app for git outside of github.
I am using github though.
Keep in mind that if I actually try to look at github, my smoothbrain glazes over. I’ve only checked what’s available through my package manager. I probably should have included that in the previous comment.
Ah, I see. If you look up “Github Desktop” online it should have a Linux version. I haven’t actually used it outside of Windows, but I can’t imagine it’s missing committing/pushing to github, that’s the whole point of the app! And yeah, github can be pretty daunting initially, there’s a lot going on and it didn’t feel intuitive to me initially either. I wish I had better advice other than just stick with it, but that’s what I did so I don’t know of any good guides
I don’t want to be one of the people you think is angry at you, but I do want to proselytize a bit.
have you ever used a dedicated download manager? think of the terminal, first, as a dedicated download manager. All you do is type wget and then paste in the URL.
eventually, you may want to specify where the file goes, or what it’s named when you finally download it, or something else. then, you can look up which flags to add with
wget -hI suggest you try Linux, any flavor, but especially Debian or Debian variants. instead of thinking you need to learn to use terminal, just remember that you have a dedicated download manager called terminal.
The thing is you will eventually learn that the terminal does a lot more than called wget. and you already know how to get help, and add flags.
Kill me.
If you say it like that you are pretty much trying to aggravate them, though
The CLI does some things so fast though. I myself like bypassing the gui and interacting more directly. Same reason I only drive manual cars and grind my own coffee (autistic?) But yes, I am glad linux has a gui and we shouldn’t force the cli on people who grew up with ipads.
ffmpeg is one of the things where I prefer the CLI. It’s crazy powerful, and does some insane things in pretty simple commands. I’ve seen a meme that says half the internet is just wrappers for ffmpeg, and I’m inclined to agree.
Also, as an arch user (btw) pacman / AUR are a much better experience than having to hunt down the installers for everything online.
Similarly, the right CLI tools make searching for files across my entire computer much simpler and way faster than I could ever do with a GUI
any tips for learning manual?
Find a friend with one, otherwise the key is to be smooth and really feel the clutch engagement. It’s different for every vehicle. Its a balance between clutch and gas. With a lower power car you’ll need more gas to balance while letting the clutch out. With an old manual truck, you pretty much need no gas input to get going because of torque. Another good way to learn could be just pick up an old g27 or g29 wheel (they have 3 pedals and a shifter either h pattern or paddles) and learn that way with a racing simple like LFS, Asetto Corsa, or Automobilista 2.
Depending where you live there’s all sorts of sub $800 manual cars. That’s how I learned (rusty $500 crx)
No one is forcing you to learn it, but you do need it for getting out of trouble.
The CLI is the fastest way of getting things done if you know what you’re doing.
you most definitely do need to use it on Linux, especially if you have a Nvidia graphics card… Audio issues are also prevalent.
Not once in the 11 months and 3 updates I saw when still on my nVidia card did I need to use terminal for anything, as there’s a built-in program for that on Mint (and a couple other distros at least, looks like)
True. But do we have to include the NVidia disclaimer in every post about Linux adoption?
Maybe we genuinely should start. It seems like it burns a lot of folks.
Some vendors have lousy Linux support.
But then, MacOS on Dell hardware, and Windows on MacBook also both require extensive CLI. iOS on Samsung gets pretty weird.
I think maybe the disclaimer we should get better at adding is:
Lots of old hardware just works on Linux, but folks trying Linux for the first time should be encouraged to check for a vendor statement.
we do if people keep claiming things like
or
or
or
The truth is that on a basic default install, even for a software engineer who maintains linux servers daily that you are going to encounter problems on linux that are much harder to solve than problems on other systems. And people want to pretend that it isn’t the case, because “I’ve been using linux for x years and never encountered that” (look at the other response to my comment besides yours for an explicit example of this). People want to say that all you need to do is learn to copy and paste from the internet, but 1. that’s a terrible idea, and 2. it doesn’t work half the time! An example of this is audio drivers! If your audio drivers don’t work, you’re probably just fucked. It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable in the terminal, it matters if the support exists at all for your system. Which you will not know until you actually install linux and spend hours trying to fix it.
It’s like people here refuse to believe that linux has problems, even for experienced users, because they think that it should be the norm to spend hours trying to resolve a problem on your computer that just … doesn’t happen on other systems. The thing is that other systems do have problems. They’re just not the literal show stopping problems that linux has. I’m literally unable to use my system because of Nvidia support and audio drivers. But mac and windows have other problems. For example my mac really struggles with my monitor usb hub in the back with usb-c passthrough. While my windows freezes when it tries to switch to dark mode, and blue screens once a month. Those things are resolved in seconds or minutes. But I literally cannot use my linux partition. It’s unusable. I’m not going to spend 50 more hours (i’ve already spent 48) trying to fix the damn issues to make the system literally usable.
I understand Linux is better for a lot of reasons. I want to switch to it. But I’m sick of people pretending like the issue is the user. It’s not. At least not a majority of the time. Linux as a whole is incredibly difficult to use if anything goes wrong. Because it’s not little things that go wrong. It’s big things.
Oh, it’s certainly not. Linux wasn’t accessible to ordinary users for years. But it usually is, today, finally. And we’re justifiably quite excited about that. Many of us worked very hard to get to this point.
But it’s not the users fault if something doesn’t work.
That said, it is absolutely the manufacturers fault, when Linux drivers aren’t available. We can’t fix that.
When we’re talking about a show stopping issue due to lack of hardware drivers, we need to remember to encourage new users to stick to the safe path of a manufacturer pre-installed OS.
The reasons Windows, Mac, IOS, and Android avoid those kinds of issues is that the hardware shipped with the OS pre-installed by the manufacturer, who tested very carefully for those issues. Linux does equally well on hardware designed to run Linux.
No operating system is going to be issue free on proprietary hardware that wasn’t created with that OS in mind. Making a Hackintosh is fun, but it’s a lousy way to become an Apple user.
Pre-installed Linux is now an option, and it is the best option for new Linux adoption. I think we need to be more vocal about that, to help folks avoid those issues.
I’m sorry you had such a bad experience.
Silly to get angry about, because you can use Linux just fine without it. But the terminal is a powerful tool.
OpenSUSE. People don’t seem to give it much love, but their system settings application YaST makes command line usage completely avoidable for average users. Even for power users, YaST makes command line usage optional rather than necessary for most tasks.
While this was true 10-15 years ago, nearly all popular distros include graphical configuration tools that are as good or better than Yast these days.
Cli usage on Linux is entirely optional these days on most Linux distributions, but once you learn a bit of cli use you actually realize that it can be a very helpful tool.
I don’t think anyone is arguing CLIs aren’t useful, pretty sure we all know that. It’s not like you see the l33t haxxorz in movies tearing through GUI windows. We’re saying we don’t want to have to rely on it to do stuff frequently, for one reason or another.
And as far as saying it’s optional, I must be a power user, because even on Ubuntu I felt I couldn’t do much of anything without opening CLI.
IMO one of Linux’ greatest follys is demanding perfection to the point where everyone just tries to make the superior way of doing things, then you end up with a mess of different ways to implement the same things. It’s like that joke about coding languages, each one meant to be the final perfect language. Like with installers, on Windows you’re generally going to get an exe, an msi, or some compressed file type that you just need to drag files into their location. Linux? I can’t even tell you how many different methods I’ve seen for installing various things, none of which seems to be the “standard”. Even compression seems to be way more all over the place, on Windows I only ever really see 7z, zip and rar, but I’ve seen a dozen different compression types for Linux files. That’s incredibly confusing for dumb people like me.
Wdym? Installing things on Linux is much simpler. There is exactly one preferred way: the application repository from the distribution with a nice GUI interface for it. File types of archives play no role in that and why would that even be relevant?
Windows only recently got something similar with the Microsoft store, and before is was a super confusing mess of lots of different types of installers and generally a huge security issue to run .exe files from unstrusted random internet downloads.
Your explanation sounds more like you are trying to use Linux like it was Windows XP. But Linux is not Windows… you are holding it wrong 😅
My most recent experience being Ubuntu, this feels like a joke. Have you used the Ubuntu store? And the suggestion that the Microsoft store is in any way good makes me question your entire comment, it’s absolute trash on top of garbage. This feels like a joke comment to me. Executables are a huge security risk for you? 🤣
Yes, the Windows store is crap, but it is still miles ahead of running random .exe installers.
And the Ubuntu store is like the worst possible example you could find 😱
Just any normal distribution repository from for example Debian or Fedora works great. And Gnome and KDE have very easy to use GUI interfaces for these and ideally Flathub is also integrated. Super easy and seamless, no joke at all.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on executables, I love them, would choose them every time over any app from the store, in fact I have zero apps from the store. I tried other stores on Ubuntu but they weren’t really better, just their own limited collections, I still ended up having to hunt down stuff and even use CLI.
When I need to run terminal, it’s because I’m following a specific guide to fix or setup something. It’s not much different than following a similar guide for Windows, except there might be a bit more copy+paste going on on Linux.
The omnipresent mentions of terminal also delayed my switch and it was completely unnecessary.
Yes, I eventually managed to learn how to do most stuff without the terminal, but almost all “How to do Whatever on Linux” tutorials immediately jump into it.
I know the terminal is more distro-agnostic, but even the distro-specific tutorials do it.
Yes, but day to day usage, you don’t have to touch it
With flatpak/snap you don’t need to use terminal anymore.