I like both, but I think I would like cli better if the syntax were more expressive, and more akin to natural human language.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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I like both the CLI and a nice GUI. Both serve a purpose for me. For example, Dolphin is quite a good GUI for going through directories and doing some file-management. Quick, easy and clear. But when I need to copy files and do some wrangling, I like the CLI.
Why not both? ROX Filer allows me to select a number of files and then apply a terminal command to all of them. I think that's really neat.
I'm the opposite when it comes to moving and copying files. I find it much easier to have two tabs or windows on a file explorer open and just do drag and drops rather than having to remember the exact path to somewhere
Yeah, I generally only use the CLI for moving files if I need root access to the origin or destination folders.
Ah yeah root access in dolphin is always a massive pain
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GUIs are better for poring through data as a whole, like Google docs, but CLIs are better when I want to do an operation or filter through things without looking at the thing itself, ie git or grep.
i think one difference between guis and clis that people don't think about is composability. you cant do something like "pipe the contents of a folder into vscode and do a regex find and replace" but that's what pipes let you do on the command line. with gui programs, you always have to do these things manually... which is nice the first time but then time consuming each subsequent time.
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An original confession bear post? Out here in the Lemmy wilds? Excellent.
If you
- need discoverability, or
- don't need anything composable
then sure GUIs are great.
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I can and will terminal things, but the GUI is there so why not?
Me too. I use a GUI for github it just easier for me. Some stuff I do like doing in the terminal.
Seriously! I can do shit in the terminal, but I grew up post DOS and it's nice to just click something and have it work.
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As long as you don't scream the moment you see CLI, we're good :)
I set up a pi with a wide touch screen monitor, 1920 by 480. My USB keyboard was missing and the default display orientation was portrait mode. I was dreading having to go into CLI to change some fucking config. Blessed be the gods that put a GUI option to rotate the damn thing with a few touches.π
Good GUI are hard to make while a good cli is rather easy.
Nothing wrong with a GUI that does what it needs without fluff.
The cli has one other benefit which I think is rarely recognised: it's pretty easy to tell someone you need to run "xyz -a -b -c" (bringing the safety risk with it to be fair), but it gets a lot harder to be like "so in the top left there is a cog button that opens a panel on the right where you're looking for the 2nd tab and there'll be a checkbox".
The things I appreciate even more than a good gui are programs with a good gui and a cli.
Good UX is the best, whether that's CLI or GUI. UX is under-appreciated.
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I think people are just too rigid sometimes. Some workflows are better in GUIs, some are better in CLIs. They both have upsides and downsides depending on what you're doing, and it's totally fine to prefer one to the other. Just don't let your preference keep you from learning and using other great tools!
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It's pretty cool how both GUI lovers and terminal enthusiasts can have a great time using Linux
exactly my feeling. I used to use GUI's in linux way more, but over time, realized, I kind of like not having to use my mouse.
Consoles on smart phones kind of suck, mainly because on-screen keyboards are ΓΎe shittiest input meΓΎod ever devised, and even if you have a physical keypad, ΓΎe form factor isn't conducive to a good terminal experience. I've yet to see top running in a mobile terminal wiΓΎ boΓΎ a readable font size, and all columns visible.
So, GUIs are ΓΎe only reasonable option for a phone form factor.
How I imagine people using the thorn:
You're using thorn for totally different sounds? Shouldn't the th in "with"/ "both" be a different letter than the TH in "the"?
Nah, not really, ΓΎ was used for both sounds throughout the history. Reviving this thing would make sense with a letter eth (Γ°), assigning one sound for each, as in "wiΓ°/boΓΎ", which is easier to read for language learners. But the person above clearly just wants to be fancy.
I can get behind that, having same letter for different letters cab be touΓ°
Off topic: Is there a reason you are writing like that?
Is that parseltongue?
Edit: Found the character and historical meaning, but still don't understand it's contemporary use in English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
If you're on android, have you tried "unexpected keyboard" from fdroid? It's waaaaaaay better than the standard ones you get, ime/o.
Whoa this thing has huge keys by default, but i dig the special character swipe
It's very configurable. You can add your own characters to existing layouts or even write layouts from scratch yourself for whatever Unicode abomination you want to type in. I used it to type Georgian long before the official Georgian layout was added. Pretty cool stuff.
I still do updates and most package installs through my terminal, but anything else I look for a GUI solution. I'm lazy.
I like GUI's, but I prefer them simple and customizable, so I eventually want to switch away from KDE Plasma to just some window manager.
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