Modify Colors
The Terminal Test: Do you have to use the terminal in Linux?
Reminder: Submit your Linux dream! Deadline: 2 PM on Thursday.
A frequent worry of Linux newbies is that they will have to learn how to use the terminal, something that is unfamiliar to new users. There is some debate, however, over when you have to use the terminal, if you have to at all. The question is: it is possible to use Linux without using the terminal?
It has been my personal opinion that everything can be done from the GUI and it is only that people are often advised to use the terminal, since it is easier to give someone a command than to explain what to click. Still, though, I sometimes find myself heading to the terminal to perform some test.
Here is the experiment: Every time I go to the terminal to do something, I will put a post out to Twitter and Identi.ca saying what I had to do, explaining the GUI way of doing it, and making suggestions for how things could be improved so that I would not have had to use the terminal – all in 140 characters.
You can follow the experiment at either of the below URLs, both should have the same content through Ping.fm.
http://identi.ca/terminaltest
http://twitter.com/terminaltest
I look forward to seeing how this experiment turns out.
Happy new year!
Related posts:
- An Update on the Terminal Test Just a few days ago I began the Terminal Test....
- When Do You Have To Use The Terminal? (Terminal Test Followup) A lot of people believe that you have to know...
- Would More Expensive Linux PCs At Wal-Mart Work? In a recent Datamation article, Matt Hartley put forward two...
- How Many Linux UMPCs Can You Name? Test Yourself. Ever since the success of the Eee PC*, it seems...
- Our Linux Dream 2008 Considering that I have been writing daily posts basically without...
CLI and GUI could be isomorph systems.
most of you obviously have not enough fantasy to see the power of a real human interface that would far more effective and surpass CLI easily….
as long as people continue to think that CLI is all you need, the world will continue to suffer from microsoft policies and people wont be as productive as they could be
This is an interesting question, but whatever the outcome, I don’t think it’s a show stopper either way.
If you are a “regular” user like the vast majority of people who just want to surf the web, do some office jobs, edit a few photos, listen to some MP3s, use email and chat, play a few games and so on, then you don’t HAVE to be able to use the terminal to get any of that done on Linux.
Sure, it helps a bit to be able to use the terminal when setting a machine up in the first place – but then how many users who would fear carrying out a Ubuntu installation would also fear carrying out a Windows installation?
In fact, the last few times I’ve installed Ubuntu, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s more-or-less easier these days than installing Windows XP. (Or at the very least, you can only really fit a cigarette paper in between them in terms of difficulty to install.)
But the type of user who doesn’t feel confident enough to carry out an installation probably isn’t going to be doing it for either Windows or Linux, so it’s a bit of a moot point.
If you are bit more of a Linux power user, then you’ll need to learn some tools to get the job done. Maybe it’s not totally necessary for the terminal to be one of those tools, but it will certainly help to have at least a basic grasp of it.
However, if you are any sort of Windows power user, then chances are you’ve probably had to find your way around the registry a few times (which is hardly the friendlies of places, despite it’s GUI), or at least get confident using the Control Panel and My Computer -> Manage. Or even worse, download and figure out 3rd party tools to tweak your system.
So I think for regular users, Windows or Linux doesn’t really make that much difference in terms of difficulty, once the system is up and running. The main difficulty for those type of users probably comes from proprietary file formats (which are usually fairly useable on Linux these days) and learning a slightly different way of doing things. Perhaps also there would be some confusion between the subtly different ways that GTK and QT apps work, if you’re using both – but it’s not insurmountable.
For moderate to power users, you’re always going to have to learn some of the tools of your OS, so again, I don’t think it makes that much difference.
Probably the main difficulty is if you are very used to one OS’s way of doing things, and expect to immediately be able to do the same on the other OS. To be honest, after having used mostly Linux for 5+ years now, I find it harder to accomplish quite a few tasks using Windows.
It’s all relative to what you are used to – which is why I think it’s always best (albeit not always possible) for people to try and learn general principles about how to use computers and be able to apply those to any OS, rather than learn too much stuff which is specific to any one OS or piece of software.
With more and more software available for both Windows and Linux, the transition from Windows to Linux is getting smother, because you can be using the same Open Source tools (Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Pidgin etc.) on Windows well before any switch to Linux. And what’s more, you can take your documents with you with no compatibility problems!
If you are technically competent, you shouldn’t struggle too much with either Windows or Linux as long as you are prepared to learn a little. If you are just a “regular” user, then the few differences should be possible to learn in a matter of an hour or so.
The terminal is a more efficient tool for getting certain jobs done, but I don’t believe it’s really necessary for “regular” users to learn it if they don’t want to.
I’m sure more and more GUI tools will come along to make the above sentence even more true in time, but I for one love using the terminal, and see it as a major plus point of Linux. Or rather – NOT having a decent terminal is one of the worst annoyances I find when using Windows!
I do. In fact, a lot of my stuff is done on the terminal.
Downloading (wget), music (MPD + ncmpc), IRC (irssi), network load monitoring (nload), system monitoring (htop), shell scripting…
It is an easy, consistent way to do stuff (I can be sure that most terminal-based apps will work on any UNIX OS, even if it doesn’t run a GUI) which can be used remotely.
For me, the terminal is the real beauty of Linux and other UNIX-based OSes.
because all ubuntu users are noobs and do nothing more than tinker and surf the internet.
I’ve installed Mandriva Linux 2009 on my notebook and when I tried to configure samba or NFS from GUI I had a lot of problems, so i went to the terminal and did it in just a minute. But I know some guys and they use Ubuntu and never need to use the terminal.
Why are Linux users so apologetic and ashamed of having to use the cmd line?
This is the best OS out there, why compete with MS to make everything GUI’fied. Linux doesn’t need new users who are afraid of using the command line. Its the heart of the system. I can guarantee that not everything in Linux can be GUI’fied. An example is IPtables. There is no firewall app out there that covers all of it. IPtables are extremely complex and is best used from the command line. There isn’t just one book out there that covers all of IPtables but several volumes of books that cover them
I disagree. The GUI is an extremely abstract concept for many people to learn. If you are someone completely unfamiliar with how computer interfaces are supposed to work (the Microsoft Way, the Apple Way, KDE Way, etc.) the GUI is absolutely nonsensical. Every inconsistency and unpredictability in the GUI is a source of frustration for the newbie. The command line, on the other hand, is very predictable, self-documenting (man pages, info pages, –help, etc.), linear (enter one command at a time and get one response at a time). The GUI has certainly become a big marketing force and a selling point, and sadly I think people are getting caught up in the eye candy more than they need to. I agree that the GUI is very appropriate for certain tasks, but I would argue that people are simply dismissing the CLI as an easier and more effective alternative to the GUI simply because it looks old or feels archaic. When I’m using my computer in public areas people often ask me if I’m using DOS… I imagine that’s how most people think about the CLI nowadays.
Richard Wareham has a very good writeup on the CLI as a tool for beginners to learn how to use a computer. It is definitely worth a read: http://osnews.com/story/6282
On the amusing flip-side, take a look at how much Win32 system-administration involves running things from the command-line (far more than the apologists would want to admit).
http://www.google.com/search?q=cmd+site%3Asupport.microsoft.com
That’s about 41,800 results as of a recent search.
The alternatives to using a command-line in Win32 usually involve regedit (totally disavowed by MS with a “use at your own risk” caveat) or some 3rd-party add-on GUI’ified application that may or may not work (and may or may not cost you a fortune). It makes me glad to have a *real* command-line on my Linux/BSD/OS-X boxes and a full suite of tools to do what I need.
There isn’t a linux distro anywhere that everything can be done from the command line. In some cases a computers hardware is supported enough to configure everything, most of the time not. Then comes the command line. If a pc was built specifically for linux, all hardware linux compatible, in a perfect world no command line. But 90 percent of the pc’s out there are not that friendly, then you have to get down and dirty to get your hardware running. I will say there are many new tools out there for advanced configuration, hardware setup, server installation, but ultimately everyone will have to use the command line at some point. Unless they have a pc with 100% supported hardware and do nothing more than word process and surf the internet. The closest I’ve seen to a gui only linux distro is Mandriva. Their toolbox covers more things that any “easy to use” distro out there.
Terminal is where the power is, but for new users it’s not required. My wife is an average computer user and has never had to touch the terminal.
I don’t HAVE to .. but I like to in certain circumstances.
I have 2 pc’s@home and I ssh a lot, add new dloads to aMule, change default routes (I have 2 public IP addresses). Etc, etc.
Just to get things done, on desktoptop distributions, no.
To get things done quicker, once you’ve overcome your fear, yes.
I actually prefer to use the terminal for a lot of tasks. I’m an arch linux user and after using linux for a few years I find it faster to complete many tasks using a few commands than using a gui. I do however agree that it’s good to not have to use the terminal for new users in distros like ubuntu. I’ll be following your progress on twitter.