• Limeey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1571·
    11 个月前

    A gui is helpful sometimes, but there’s a lot of cases where there’s no feasible way to make a good gui that does what the terminal can do.

    Right tools for the right job.

    For example, a gui to move a file from one folder to another is nice - drag and drop.

    A gui that finds all files in a directory with a max depth of 2 but excludes logs and runs grep and on matching files extracts the second field of every line in the file? Please just let me write a one liner in bash

        • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          29·
          11 个月前

          I always install gparted in the live environment 😂… cuz… yeah, I can fuck things up and end up without my data 😂.

          • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
            71·
            11 个月前

            Not much of a picture guy personally but I see your point.

            Edit: I have spent a decent amount of time organizing books and comic books and that was a pretty even split between GUI and Terminal. GUI to get them in a state that I could bulk rename/move into appropriate directory with the Terminal. I assume it would be similar with pictures.

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
              4·
              11 个月前

              I spent last winter ripping all my DVDs, and I did a lot of the organizing, changing file names etc. in the terminal. Because I could automate the process even a little.

              When doing TV shows, I could take the names of episodes from an online database, put those in a text file, use block edit mode and macros in Vim to format them the way I want, then use a bash command to iterate over the lines in a file and rename them all. Hell I’d probably still be at it if I had to rename that many files manually, even using copy/paste.

          • Astaroth@lemm.ee
            3·
            11 个月前

            I have a GUI file manager that I never use but I got it because I know at some point I’m going to want to be able to see thumbnails of images.

        • thehatfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          42·
          11 个月前

          I see a lot of people saying they have to use a GUI tool for partition management, and I’ve never understood why.

          Text based tools like parted are fairly easy to use, at least compared to other terminal tools the same people are able to use for other tasks.

          What is it about partitioning that needs a GUI when other tasks don’t? Is it the visual representation of the partition layout? A general fear of borking a disk?

          • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
            15·
            11 个月前

            Is it the visual representation of the partition layout? A general fear of borking a disk?

            Yes

            Being able to see it helps a lot. I can and have done it via parted. My media server doesn’t have a desktop environment installed. I just really would rather have a GUI when it’s available as an added safeguard.

          • aard@kyu.de
            7·
            11 个月前

            Problem nowadays is that changing partition tables is so rare that parted changes their commands between uses, and I never remember if fdisk nowadays has all the GPT related issues that made me try parted in the first place ironed out. Plus I can’t remeber the new GPT commands and partition IDs.

            I still mostly just read the help text every time because nothing else is installed - but from the speed I might be a bit faster with a well designed GUI nowadays if it is about modifying GPT disks. MBR disks I still can do with fdisk in my sleep.

      • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        11 个月前

        Surely you’ve used something roughly equivalent like searching a text, be it web page or other document, for a word or filtering a spreadsheet?

      • aard@kyu.de
        3·
        11 个月前

        Emacs grep lets you run grep, and formats the results in a buffer from where you can then easily visit the files at the match location.

    • Dmian@lemmy.world
      1225·
      11 个月前

      Disagree. Anything that can be done with terminal can be done with a GUI, you just need to be good at UX. Most programmers I know are pretty bad at UX, and program for themselves, not the user.

      Edit, just to clarify (because I know some of you will feel personally attacked): I’m not saying a GUI may be better, or more efficient than a CLI, I’m just saying that it can be done. And as an example, see 3D shaders in modern programs, that need no code at all and are purely visual. That was unthinkable some years ago.

      • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
        16·
        11 个月前

        That’s just not true. Not without lots of hand waving.

        In my terminal I can, and pretty much hourly do, combine many programs in chains of input and output to perform specific tasks and get information I need. And that’s how these programs are designed to be used. The programmer builds it to do specific things and then the user can combine the program with others in novel and nearly endless ways.

        With a GUI, sometimes that’s possible between two programs if you can copy/paste between them but it’s much less reusable and a lot more tedious. But usually it’s just not possible because they’re designed for specific user personas and not as general purpose tools that may be part of a script.

        • Dmian@lemmy.world
          17·
          11 个月前

          Well, seeing the progression of 3D programs and how a lot of complex operations are nowadays done in a visual way, I guess we won’t agree on this one, I guess.

          But I affirm in my conviction that anything can be made with a GUI. It may be difficult to reach a suitable GUI, with a lot of back and forth, and probably a lot of user feedback, but with a good methodology and a good understanding of UX, it can be done.

          Sad we can’t agree. Cheers.

          • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
            6·
            11 个月前

            Generally I would agree that anything can be made with a GUI with enough investment. But the point where diminishing returns don’t give enough return on GUI investment are reached much sooner than a scriptable shell environment where a power user can extend it in ways that would only make sense for that power user or a very small number of users.

            • Dmian@lemmy.world
              13·
              11 个月前

              Oh! I’m in no way discussing the viability or economy of it. Of course in a lot of cases, creating a batch process, for example, may be the better choice. And I would also say that in some cases, using a CLI may be way more efficient that creating a GUI for something.

              My statement is just that it can be done. Nothing more.

              And in some cases, it’s not even that hard, it’s just that maybe people are used to do things using terminal. Or there may be other reasons. Who knows? But I would like for programmers to, at least, consider the option in some cases. You may be surprised at the things that can be achieved with a good GUI, and how it helps less tech-savvy users.

        • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
          7·
          11 个月前

          To play the opposite team a bit here, I like the idea Android uses of Intents for something like this. I think it falls apart a bit in reality because app companies kinda want you in their garden and so don’t often do the work to keep things interoperable. That and the use cases from users on phones don’t frequently involve cross app functionality. But the ability is powerful for apps to say “my app needs a user photo” or one of my faves “my app needs a pgp provider (for the password store app)” and then let the other app do that piece of functionality as determined by the OS, which tracks a lot of those providers and lets the user decide which to use.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          11 个月前

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automator_(macOS), or in general, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language

          'Course, there’s a reason those things basically never catch on, which is that they don’t actually reduce the inherent difficulty of figuring out the algorithm, and for anything non-trivial messing with a whole bunch of drop-down lists and shit is more cumbersome than just typing the damn thing.

        • Limeey@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 个月前

          This right here, you can gui a single program, but with pipes we can chain nearly infinite programs. No way can you make a gui that is that flexible, I refuse to believe until I see it

        • Dmian@lemmy.world
          63·
          11 个月前

          Are you talking about sending the output of one process to the input of another?

          I think the shaders I’ve mentioned are a great example of that: you do something in a block, then send the result to the input of another block.

          Sorry if it’s not what you mean, but my point is that, with some effort, you can create a visual representation of even the most abstract concepts. Physicists do this constantly. If we can make a visual representations of 4D, for example, what prevents us from doing the same for programming logic? Or for commands?

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
            7·
            11 个月前

            Yeah, and doing this would take significantly longer to use every time than typing up a chain of commands in a terminal.

            • Dmian@lemmy.world
              45·
              11 个月前

              Agreed. But that’s not my point. My point is that it can be done.

              And in some cases, even if it’s less than ideal, and is way more cumbersome than using a CLI, you are helping non-tech-savvy people do things they couldn’t do any other way.

              • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                51·
                11 个月前

                Linux users: Non tech savvy people? Yuck

                Also Linux users: Everyone should be running Linux instead of Windows!

                • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  7·
                  11 个月前

                  Put those two statements together and the logical conclusion is that Linux users simply want everybody to be tech-savvy (although I’d use a different term: computer-literate). What’s wrong with that?

              • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                11 个月前

                Nobody capable of defining an algorithm in a visual flowchart like that isn’t also capable of doing it in a CLI (or at least, in text in general – writing a script). It’s thinking through what you want to happen that’s the hard part; expressing it in the UI is trivial in comparison.

                • Dmian@lemmy.world
                  24·
                  11 个月前

                  Some people have problems remembering commands, for example. And it’s easier for them if they can see it.

                  Yes, you can teach a kid to program (with some effort), but there’s a reason why Scratch presents logic units with shapes and colors and a GUI.

                  There are many reasons why a visual representation may be easier to grasp than just resorting to memory and remembering abstract concepts.

                  I mean, do you remember everything that you write? You’ve never had to visit Stack Overflow to remember how to do something, because you forgot the exact syntax of an operation? Now, how about if I put things visually in front of you? What would be easier?

            • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
              2·
              11 个月前

              Things like that have been around for a long time. It was like two decades ago that I saw this shader scheme in softimage|xsi.

              For implementing something like that, each node in that graph would have an array of inputs and outputs. Each of those would have a type like vector, scalar, colour, string. Then you only allow connections if the inputs and outputs match types (though you can also have conversion nodes or selectors that say pick the red channel of a colour to turn it into a scalar). Each input can be set to a constant value instead of connecting something else to it. Outputs don’t need to be connected, which is mostly useful if a node has multiple outputs. Then each node has an evaluation function that takes all input parameters and maybe internal configuration parameters (though you might as well make everything an input param since there’s no real functional difference) and uses them to calculate the outputs, which it then sends on to anything connected to those.

              I’m not much of a UI guy but displaying it for the GUI would just involve drawing boxes or some shape for the node, then spaces for each of the inputs on the left side and outputs on the right side maybe colour code them by type, and lines running along the connections. Then just add the name and/or other visual information you want to display and positional information to let users move it around their work area.

      • kpw@kbin.social
        11·
        11 个月前

        They tried to replace programming languages with drag-and-drop toolkits too. It can be done, but sometimes there’s a reason we don’t do it.

        • Dmian@lemmy.world
          25·
          11 个月前

          But I’m not talking about programming languages, I’m talking about CLI programs, or system commands.

          And I’m not telling a GUI would be better, or more efficient, I’m just saying that it can be done (something you are saying too about programming languages).

          That’s the point: a GUI can replace a CLI. Is it better? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Is it possible? Absolutely.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            11 个月前

            I would assert that basically every shell I’m aware of is also a programming/scripting langauge, able to handle things like loops and branches. This is possible to do in a GUI but it’s kind of telling no one has achieved this in a desktop environment to any significant degree, including in the Linux space.

            “Iterate over all of the files in this folder, if it’s a video file of any format, create a folder with the same name as the video file in ~/Videos and move the file there.” I’m unaware of an OS desktop environment that can do even that level of automation with default GUI tools. It’s like 5 lines of Bash including “done;” at the end. You can probably do it in PowerShell, but I bet Windows power users would rather use AutoHotKey for this.

            • Dmian@lemmy.worldEnglish
              13·
              11 个月前

              You really can’t imagine doing that with a GUI? Here you have something to give you an idea (sorry it’s in Spanish, but I guess you can get an idea of how it may work):

              Here I’m selecting a specific type of files (PDFs, but I can select several different types, as I’m organising by file type), after which I did a right click, and selected a contextual action that shows a popup to do a following action. In this case it’s renaming, but it could easily be a “Move to…” that could include a check option of “Create a folder for each file”. I mean, it was actually pretty fast too. It’s not that difficult.

              • howrar@lemmy.ca
                4·
                11 个月前

                It wouldn’t make sense to add clutter to a GUI that benefits a tiny fraction of users a tiny fraction of the time while making the experience worse for everyone else.

              • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                11 个月前

                I can imagine making a GUI that does it. But most aren’t able to. “That could include a check option of…” yeah it doesn’t though, is my point. GUIs are for doing things manually.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
        71·
        11 个月前

        Most programmers are bad at UX but not nearly as bad as GUI designers are at understanding abstraction.

        • Dmian@lemmy.world
          310·
          11 个月前

          That’s your opinion, and I disagree with it. It takes a lot of abstract thinking to synthesize an action in a visual way, like an icon.

          Designers are good at lateral thinking, and founding visual ways of representing abstract concepts (and you can’t represent something visually if you don’t understand it first).

  • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    711·
    11 个月前

    Super + T in my case, but still…

    (shhh 🤫, it’s actually the win key, but don’t let the Linux users hear ya 🤫)

      • ayaya@lemdro.idEnglish
        15·
        11 个月前

        For me it’s the (custom-ordered) Arch logo key ◉⁠‿⁠◉

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      6·
      11 个月前

      For me, it’s:

      • mod + return for terminal
      • mod + e for file manager
      • mod + r for dmenu/bemenu
      • mod + d to switch to the next empty workspace.

      All because I have to work with win10 workstations and using a different, superior shortcut scheme would mess up my muscle memory. Remembering to use shutdown -s -f -t 0 instead of poweroff is difficult enough, and don’t even get me started with the audacity to use curl as an alias for Invoke-WebRequest!

    • yesman@lemmy.worldOP
      41·
      11 个月前

      I have to confess. I had to look up the shortcut for terminal because I haven’t interacted with a Linux desktop in years. I’m a Windows cuck, but not a total imposter bc I’ve kept a debian server running on my network for years. Whenever something breaks or I do an update (the updates are invariably the cause of the breakage) I manage her with ssh.

      • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        11 个月前

        It’s Ctrl+Alt+T on most DEs… but, that’s way too many keys for my taste, so I usually just add Super+T as well (don’t remove the default).

  • cetvrti_magi@lemmy.world
    612·
    11 个月前

    Few days ago I was in meeting with two friend, we did something for school, and my screen was shared. At one point I had to type something in Vim so I opened a terminal. They were shocked, confused and said something like “we aren’t hackers” (and we are on IT department). More people should know about beauty of CLI.

  • misophist@lemmy.world
    34·
    11 个月前

    Honestly, I like both. I use whichever provides the biggest productivity multiplier. For example, I can navigate around the filesystem and manipulate text files and code extremely quickly in the terminal. On the flip side, I like to use a gui which allows me to spread 6-12 terminal windows across my multiple displays.

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
    353·
    11 个月前

    The terminal is not fancy, or pretty, and its not that nice to use, but its always available and it gets the job done, just like OPs mum

  • Yaarmehearty@lemmy.ml
    31·
    11 个月前

    I can’t say I love the terminal, if there’s a GUI for a task I’ll use that but there comes a time in every troubleshooting session where the terminal is just the only way to do something reliably.

    I’m not going to lie though, I forget commands constantly so have to search the most basic shit to type in.

        • PlutoParty@programming.dev
          1·
          11 个月前

          Ash is the only one I’m aware of, but that’s primarily going to be found and used on stuff like routers or other embedded devices. Any modern shell can support history. That said, many users will disable it or wipe it on logout for security reasons.

          • chitak166@lemmy.world
            2·
            11 个月前

            It’s not just history support. It will provide autocomplete suggestions based on what you’ve already typed and allow you to browse the history of a specific query.

            Zsh is the only shell I’ve used that supports it, using Manjaro.

            My Ubuntu 22.04 server using Bash does not. It only supports the basic history that I think you are referring to where you can just browse the history of all your commands at once.

  • dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
    28·
    11 个月前

    Intellij: Has a modern GUI for Git with code cleanup, import optimization and visualization of changes.

    Me: Open terminal, ‘git commit -m “wrote code” && git push’. Then realize I forgot to add half of the files, so I make another commit. Then realize I forgot to cleanup bad indents, so I make another commit. Then realize my code doesn’t even build, so I make another commit, etc.

    • Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      11 个月前

      The only Git GUI that I find actually lets me do the basics in a simple way is GitHub desktop. It allows me to quickly see a diff of the changes, select a few lines or a chunk or all the file, it manages stashes and conflicts for me which is like 98% of my usage. Otherwise I use gitui or the git cli for anything more complex than committing and switching/merging branches.

      • kdm@lemmy.world
        7·
        11 个月前

        I’ve started using LazyGit recently and I love it. It runs in CLI and essentially just maps the git commands to keyboard shortcuts. Really easy to use and learn, definitely increased my productivity

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    262·
    11 个月前

    Don’t forget us dyslexics though! Cli is rough on that, but gui tends to avoid the errors a typo can cause.

    I swear, having to copy/paste stuff in terminal to avoid typing the damn commands five times is way less convenient.

    I get it, Linux veterans love the terminal because it is efficient and capable. But there’s multiple reasons for a gui interface for common tasks, accessibility being the biggest.

      • olutukko@lemmy.world
        201·
        11 个月前

        It’s not locking behind terminal. It’s just not implementing gui. Which is completely valid since that takes time and effort

        • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
          71·
          11 个月前

          Also, writing a GUI wrapper for a terminal-only program is much easier than writing a terminal wrapper for a GUI-only program.

          • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
            14·
            11 个月前

            Anyone worth any kind of respect writes the API for an application/CTA first and then uses the same API to power the GUI so it can also be used as a CLI tool.

            Everyone is happy, no elitism or wars.

            • AeonFelis@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              11 个月前

              What do you mean by “CTA”? How don’t see how “Call to Action” is relevant in this context, seeing how it’s more of a UX design concern than a technical thing. Or does it have some other meaning that does not appear in Google’s first page of results and that ChatGPT is not aware of, and yet “Anyone worth any kind of respect” already implements?

      • Adanisi@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10·
        11 个月前

        People are free to write a GUI for it, assuming it’s free software. And you are free to not use a terminal and use any GUI alternatives.

        I mean, locking things behind a GUI definitely isn’t freedom. GUIs are very limited compared to most terminal interfaces.

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
          7·
          11 个月前

          it’s just very hard to make a usable ui, and extremely easy to make a great cli interface

        • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
          31·
          11 个月前

          Are you kidding? There are literally hundreds of commands in the terminal which don’t have a symmetrical GUI application baked into the OS.

          Why would you create a whole GUI for a simple command such as scp and tail. Literally half of Linux is solely in the terminal

          • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
            2·
            11 个月前

            Oh ok. I guess we have a different definition of what “locked” means. One could definitely make a GUI for simple commands. Who knows, maybe some students somewhere already have.

    • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      11 个月前

      I just feel like a heel using a key with a Windows logo printed on it to do anything of use in Linux.

      • spikespaz@programming.dev
        2·
        11 个月前

        Me too. Every once in awhile I have to remind myself that it’s not my fault that Lenovo decided to plaster a windows logo on that key. Realistically, that’s everybody’s key, and it was unfair of Microsoft to do that to us in the first place