this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
645 points (92.6% liked)

linuxmemes

21631 readers
41 users here now

Hint: :q!


Sister communities:


Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
  • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
  • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
  •  

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!


    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.

    founded 2 years ago
    MODERATORS
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

    Is it mandatory to use the terminal for everything?

    No. Most distros have a GUI that you can use to install stuff without touching the terminal, and most distros have a GUI for configuring your system (think Control Panel in Windows).

    It's not necessary to use the terminal, but I do recommend eventually learning how to use the terminal, for a couple reasons:

    1. It's more ubiquitous - like you said, a lot of places online give terminal instructions, not GUI instructions for things, so knowing your way around the terminal is helpful in those situations. Plus, it makes things a little more distro-agnostic - if I'm trying to install some program, I know I can probably run apt install regardless of whether I'm running Mint, Ubuntu, PopOS, or any other Debian-based distro that uses the apt package manager.

    2. It's usually faster. Opening a terminal window and typing in a few dozen characters is usually going to take less time than digging through a couple layers of menus.

    3. It's more flexible. A lot of times, GUIs are just fronts for a terminal based application, and sometimes they only partially implement the features the terminal app exposes. By using the terminal app directly, you aren't limited by whatever options happen to be made available in the GUI.

    Again though, it's not necessary to use the terminal. It's definitely helpful, especially if you want to do gaming, or if you're used to being a power user (which it seems like you are in Windows), but certainly not a requirement these days.