If we want the year of the Linux desktop to actually happen we need to have good GUI tools for almost everything. The second you say “command line” most people’s eyes glaze over and they say they’ll stick with Windows. Believe it or not guys, most people just want something that functions out of the box and they don’t want to mess with it.
This is the energy we need.
New comers should never ever see or require a terminal.
Not understanding the fundamentals of the tools you use daily is not a design virtue, it just makes you less effective in using them. This cancerous philosophy leverages ignorance and laziness to support billion dollar industries of greed, slop, and censorship. It enables corrupt morons to justify surveilance and exploit weaker people. And right now, it’s running blind and head first into a civilizational death trap.
I don’t know what you’re raging about, but consider this, do you know the internal workings of every device you own and use? Can you repair your car if it broke down? Can you rewire your house if something goes wrong? Can you fix the plumbing? Do you understand everything about your bike? Do you know the ins and outs of your own body? Do you understand your pets like a trainer would?
You call others lazy, but I guarantee you, there’s something they consider basic that you have absolutely no understanding of despite using it all the time.
These questions are all beside the point. People seek help in problems they know how to solve all the time, often in the interest of time itself.
But since you asked:
- I don’t own a car, and they’re just another example of how we cuck ourselves in much the same regard by creating shitty infrastructure to support a modus operandi and economic status quo, that aren’t fit for purpose.
- I’ve some experience in home electronics.
- donlt cycle much these days but i spent many afternoons fixing them as a child; having begged for it in the first place there was no other reliable way to ride them again
- no. but again, asking for help on such matters doesn’t undermine the point because i’m not saying you shouldnlt seek consultation to solve problems you can’t manage alone. To the extent there is a point about consultation, it’s that you should understand enough of the relevant terminolgy to be able to implement the advvise offered by the consultant (the doctor in this case).
- having had a trainer (not my choice) for a dog, i can honestly say yes.
Perhaps, but computers are likely far easier to learn about than whatever that is, and infintely less expensive if you already have regular access to one. Think of it like this, if they were so hard, would so many of the dumbest people in public life have started out as “experts” in computers? Would all the moron libertarian crypto enthusiasts have been able to assemble their elaborate blockchain networks that process a whopping 7 transactions per second?
And please note, laziness alone isn’t a criticism/problem (it can often motivate efficiency), it’s when particular applications of laziness to produces results that require undoing; especially when the costs of undoing excede the cost of doing nothing at all
It’s not a design virtue because then it would have to be a design but you are talking about a… Customer fallacy…?
I CAN interact with CLI, but i WANT to interact with good GUI. I don’t want to learn CLI commands when I don’t have to. Especially in the cases where I use it rarely
Are you kidding? There’s nothing I love more than hand typing a 400 character file path.
Tab?
Yeah and that’s totally fair enough, but people who like using a command line and know the tools well rarely if ever have to type out long paths or commands. Tab completion and history suggestion (especially in a modern shell like fish or zsh) is a joy to use, and doesn’t just do file paths but command options and arguments. Man pages are very overwhelming at first, but if you’re practiced at scanning them, then it’s a lot more convenient to get the info right where you are than to navigate to another window. But the learning curve is steep and I get why someone wouldn’t want to bother.
fish
let’s compromise with a TUI
In the same way some GUIs are trash, lord have mercy some CLIs are trash. Things like adding two verbose flags makes it extra verbose. Things like the parameter order mattering. Yeesh. It can be rough. It really varies tool by tool.
two verbose flags makes it extra verbose
tcpdump intensifies
But what tool did you have in mind?
Things like the parameter order mattering.
I imagine this is unavoidable in many cases.
Yeah, I guess that’s true. I suppose given more time to think about it I wouldn’t really complain about that. It’s mostly things like
script in outthat are sort of annoying versus something likescript --in foo --out bar.I believe API (CLI or programmatic) should never have 2 arguments of the same type but different roles next to each other without visual cues.
No
fn("in.txt", "out.txt")and noscript in out
I like GUIs but I also like automation. Give me a nice simple GUI but also give me a way to run from a bash shell so I can automate functions based on complex conditions and/or a schedule.
TUI
You’re just describing a task scheduler.
I like GUIs if they aren’t web browsers pretending to be a desktop applications.
I’ve been at risk for carpal tunnel before, which is why I primarily use a keyboard.
…on a GUI.
Linux is great for a lot of things but so many open-source apps are terrible about giving you a visual interface for something, and then letting you use your keyboard to navigate it. Granted, Windows has steadily enshittified its lead on that front as well.
I generally prefer GUIs, but sometimes the terminal is just easier!
Skill issue
LOL! I have too much!
Can I borrow some. Promise I’ll give it back
The thing about CLI is that everything is hidden by default. You come to the application with your own mindset and a goal in mind and you figure out how make it do what you want.
When there’s a GUI, you often see everything that’s possible from the start and so the application dictates how you use it.Though, you can do either with CLI and GUI as well. That’s the sweet spot I think is the best. I love it when a CLI app guides the user through a process and gives options. And a good GUI should disable OK buttons and show validation errors if not everything is entered correctly.
In a perfect world, every app has a CLI mode, interactive and non interactive and a GUI mode with full validation and responsive UI changes. But realistically, good UX is what we need, either GUI or CLI.
Also CLI interfaces are a lot like having to know a language with the right keywords and vocabulary. Sometimes the manual doesn’t always list out all the commands so it takes some trial and error to figure out. You can easily change something you didn’t want to as you do.
This is one of the reasons why I can’t migrate from visual studio to VS code for work. Everything is hidden beyond the weird palette search bar thingy. Just give me drop down menus and toolbars please. I’m sick of having to remember shortcuts for things I don’t do often enough to warrant it taking space up in my very limited pool of memory
Heh same here. I’m missing so many toolbars I regularly use in VS. I do use VScode at home but I’m always at a loss on how to do something.
I can and will terminal things, but the GUI is there so why not?
I like tuis
Call me a hater, but TUIs are just filler for the modern wm ricer. I see new ones pop up everyday lol
“just”? When my aesthetics are perfect I work 20% faster it feels like! And … Well i’m fabulous
rtorrent!
hater!
(but for real, I love a well-done TUI. Scriptability of CLIs is nice but sometimes the in-between of a good interface while remaining embedded in the shell works so well. Something like vifm allows me to zoom around with fzf, select things by regex or rename with vidir, move and package with rsync or tar, all without ever leaving my terminal context)
hater!
Can’t say I didn’t ask for it lol
I get their usability too. It’s understandable if you have to access a server remotely and you want some sort of interface for some software without loading the server with a lot of packages like gtk, qt or stuff like that. I said it mostly to jokingly dunk on the newer arch/omarchy users with their fancy hyperland setups :P
Your torrent box should not need a WM to download torrents, and given the dynamic nature of a torrent download (speed/peers/pieces), a one-shot cli wont cut it either.
A TUI is a perfect use-case for torrents, though I havent seen it done well in either transmission or aria2
You’re totally right, that’s the best usecase for a TUI. I was joking :)
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.
What do you mean by conposable in this context?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composability
In a CLI I can do
ls -a | grep ".png"to find all the png files in the directory. In a GUI I can use the search function if it was implemented and well designed for the purpose I need it for. But I can’t infinitely mix and match functions like I can in bash.Yeah, to do so in a GUI, you would require a nodes UI or similar thing, which is pretty heavy in itself and one won’t use it unless that’s the point of the workflow.
Like, piping the output of a program into another program.
I like well ordered man pages.
You like OpenBSD.
They are good for discoverability, but suck when you have to do the same thing 5 times.
– signed, a guy currently having to use a GUI to update the firmware on 5 headsets, and put our standard settings on them
The best compromise is to have a right click menu option that copies the cli command for the function you are trying to perform.
I shall endeavour to include this feature in the tui program I’m writing, and soon to implement menus in.
Thank you <3
