To all the people pointing the many inconsistencies of Linux/specific distros, I recommend The Unix Haters’ Handbook

Y tho

Recently I tried a new, modern distro: Solus.

After installation, I survived about 10 minutes without a command line and the next thing I needed was their package manager’s manual (because that fancy GUI software shop simply killed itself)

No big deal for me. I feel safe on these paths. But IMHO “Linux without command line” is still only a dream.

Why would you want to?

How can I trust an application that was installed by a “Software Manager” that doesn’t have super cow powers?

I think tools like YaST help to save time, instead of editing the bootloader in config files, you can simply enter, search for “Boot Loader” and edit there, be following a tutorial or official documentation. I sometimes prefer to use YaST just so I don’t do things wrong. it’s like the old Control Panel in Windows.

Even basic things in distros are quite different, for example the frontend for settings, so tech support threads will show how to do it in the backend. Oh well, but then there’s someone who suggests

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

If you’re a noob, run this and get a “nano: command not found” error, you’ll google it and learn to resolve it using apt. However, Manjaro’s package manager is pacman but you don’t know, so you install apt using a weird guide without knowing what it even is. The next update then wreaks havoc on your system.

My first install ended in a dependency hell because of this.

You can. Most things have gui options.

But you quickly learn for somethings. The terminal is just easier.

If you ignore odd stuff. Most everyday stuff to maintain the system is available in a controlled panal like program. It varies based on distribution and windows manager. But the basic setup is there for most things.

Its when you want to do something creative it gets more complex. While most commands have gui apps. Most online guidance will just find the terminal an easy way to guide you.

Ιt depends on your competence. My mom’s laptop is Debian with XFCE (2 GB RAM old Chromebook converted to run Debian) and of course, she doesn’t use the terminal. But then again, she doesn’t even know how to open a new tab on Chrome. She just uses 1 tab at the time (which is why it’s enough with 2 GB of RAM). So she’s never going to see a terminal in her life, and it’s going to work just fine for her, since the only thing she does on a computer is load 1 tab on Chrome, and mostly use Facebook, or youtube, or news/recipe sites that I have put on her bookmark bar. When the computer needs to be updated, I do it for her once a month or so (using the terminal).

But if you’re trying to do a lot more than that, then maybe, sometimes, you will need to fix or change things using the terminal.

Yeah, obviously, or the title wouldn’t even have happened.

And it’s been that way for a while now. Back when windows 10 happened, I was able to install mint, get most of my preferred programs set up, and handle data transfer with zero CLI use. Which was awesome, because my dyslexic ass would have taken forever otherwise. It wasn’t until I started putzing around for pop and giggles that I even opened a terminal.

My mom w as able to jump right in after installation of mint, and go through the gui to try things out, no issues.

I’ve been daily driving Linux Mint for 10 years now. The answer to this question is “for what most people consider everyday usage, you have to use the Linux terminal about as often as you have to edit the Windows registry.” And in fact over the 10 years I’ve been a Linux user, GUI tools in Linux are increasingly available, and I’ve heard Windows normies talking about the registry more.

When I started out, Mint shipped with Synaptic Package Manager, and a lot of distros didn’t include a GUI at all. Now GUI package managers are the rule rather than the exception and most have bespoke polished app store -like things. You of course can still use apt or dnf or pacman or whatever, but you decreasingly have to.

I never once touched the registry on my Win 98, Win XP, Win Vista or Win 7 machines. Win 8 required a couple registry keys to turn off that…curtain that you had to click away to get to the login screen? and a few other “tablet first” features Win 8 had, and now I hear “just go and add these registry keys to put the start menu on the left, turn off ads, re-enable right click and retract the rectal thermometer.”

Linux is becoming more normie friendly while Windows is genuinely becoming less normie friendly.

Package management is probably the biggest thing a Linux user might need to use the terminal for. The graphical package managers used by default on most desktop environments are far too limited.

KDE’s Discover for instance is capable of installing (graphical) desktop applications, uninstalling packages and performing updates. Sure, it supports native packages on the majority of distros through PackageKit, as well as Flatpaks and Snaps, but it can only perform very basic package manager operations. I imagine most users will at some point need to install a package that isn’t a graphical desktop application, such as a driver or an optional dependency and they will need to use the terminal for it.

To my knowledge, this is also the state of most other graphical package managers that take the form of “software centers” like Discover. More powerful graphical package managers do exist, usually specific to a specific package manager such as Octopi for Pacman. Few distros ship with them, however. I believe one notable exception is OpenSUSE with YaST. There’s also dnfdragora on Fedora, which is pretty basic, but might be good enough for most purposes.

For me, the terminal is something I’ll learn once I’m more familiar with which apps I like. Until then, it’s nice to have something like pamac to help me find the thing I need.

To be fair you can’t use windows without using the terminal. And you have to open regedit to turn off a lot of annoying crap

Of course.

But why would you want to!?

Can you live without using your thumbs?