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Is it possible to use Linux without the command line? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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We've all heard it before: People claiming Linux isn't a viable alternative cause you can't run it without using the command line.

I decided to test that. Now there are several distros aimed at new users that have preinstalled GUI tools so you don't have to touch the Terminal. But I wanted to see if that's also possible on a distro not specifically aimed at fresh converts. The oldest distro with a large userbase, which a lot of people consider to be a "standard" Linux, is Debian, so default Debian with Gnome is what I'll use.

I consider "running an OS" to at least include booting it with full disk encryption, starting applications, connecting to a network, browsing the web, file management, installing updates and new software (both from the repos and third party sources), installing necessary drivers, setting up printing and scanning, and adjusting the looks and behaviour of the user interface.
So generally anything you'd be able to do on Windows without opening Powershell, CMD, Regedit or a text editor.

I guess I'm telling you nothing new when I say that you can install, boot, launch apps and browse the web on Debian without the command line.
It comes with a pre-installed software center, printer and scanner setup works out of the box from Gnome's settings.

Here's where it gets a little trickier: Scrolling on Firefox is rough, cause the preinstalled old version doesn't have Wayland support enabled. So you either have to enable Wayland support or install the Flatpak version of Firefox.
To enable Wayland, you have to write MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 into /etc/environment. But the file manager doesn't let you edit system files without starting it as root from the command line. To add an "edit as admin" entry to the context menu in Nautilus, you need the nautilus-admin package which isn't available in the software center. It can be installed with Synaptic, a pre-installed GUI frontend for apt. But you still need to edit a system text file, which goes against the spirit of this challenge.
The other option requires enabling Flatpak for the Software Center. You can do that by installing gnome-software-plugin-flatpak using synaptic, then heading over to https://flathub.org/setup/Debian to download the flathub repo file which can be installed with a double-click and a reboot.
Note: Beginner-friendly distros ship with a newer Firefox version and Flatpak support out of the box.

To install any compatible binary on your system (like the Universal Android Debloater, for example), just copy it to any place you like. Install the menu editor alacarte and use it to add a menu entry for the file. Now you can launch it from within Gnome by clicking on its icon or using the global search.

Another issue is that during the boot process, you're already presented with the command line running boot messages by you, and the password prompt for the disk decryption is also on the command line. Also, the 5 second Grub countdown is kind of annoying. To make this prettier, we need to install grub-customizer, launch it, set the grub countdown to 0 and add the word splash at the end of your kernel parameters in the settings. This activates the "boot-prettifier" plymouth which is pre-installed but not activated by default. Again, pushing the boundaries of this challenge.
Note: Beginner-friendly distros come with pretty plymouth boot enabled by default.

To enable the non-free nvidia Driver, you need to enable non-free software during the GUI installation or in the Software Center settings, then install nvidia-driver from Synaptic, and reboot.
Note: Beginner-friendly distros come with a one-click NVidia driver install

To install Steam from the Debian repos, you'd need to enable Multi-Arch first, which isn't possible without the command line. Using the Flatpak version is your other option.
Note: Some beginner-friendly distros handle this for you as soon as you install a package that depends on multi-arch

tl/dr: It's possible to run and administer Debian for standard tasks without touching the command line. It's just generally faster to use the terminal if you know what you're doing.
Distros like Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin or Pop!_OS (possibly also Manjaro which I have no experience with) remove the remaining roadblocks. The only time you'll always need the command line is to fix issues you have with help from other users, because it's much, much easier to just post the right terminal commands online than to guide you through whichever GUI you might be using.
Anyone who's ever followed a Windows troubleshooting guide knows what I'm talking about.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I paid for a keyboard, I'm going to use a keyboard!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Every key, too! I may not know what the heck SysReq is, but I'm hitting it!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

There is one simple question you gotta ask yourself.

Is it worth it to press SysReq without knowing what it will do?

"do you feel lucky, punk?"

[–] [email protected] 59 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Yes, but no...

For a basic user, who does not expect to be doing anything special beyond opening existing programs, or using programs downloaded from the package-manager its possible to never touch terminal.

I have two kids who daily drive Manjaro based light gaming PC's, they never touch the terminal, but they also dont administer their systems, I do.

I do use the terminal, frequently for updates, and some specialized tasks like minecraft mods which require unpacking files and sometimes fixing permissions.

So my TLDR, is that its possible to be a USER without touching the terminal, but I dont think its possible to be an administrator without.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

You can update the system with the Software Center / Pamac / Synaptic, and unpack archives and adjust permissions from within Nautilus.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

So my TLDR, is that its possible to be a USER without touching the terminal, but I dont think its possible to be an administrator without.

Suse with Yast makes it possible to administer just with GUI. Not 100% sure if it can do absolutely everything possible but it has lots of tools.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes.

Anyone who says differently is confusing "necessity" with "efficiency".

When I first started in Linux I rarely used the command line at all. But as time went on and I became more familiar, I found that there were some things that were simply faster to do in the command line.

I can't think of a single "everyday regular user task" than needs the command line, tbh.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

I think one of the issues, why there terminal is seen as necessity is, that there are almost no tutorials that refer to the gui. So if you're a newbie and try to find out how something works like adding a third party repo to your package manager or making an install script executable, all you get is a command. You don't get a "add this address to the list in the settings menu of your package manager, which you can find here", for example.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think it’s perfectly possible to use Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora without the terminal. But a lot of online tutorials are like, “Just run this command.” because it’s faster.

I’m an experienced terminal user but I know with my Steam Deck, I barely ever use it. Really the only time is when I want to update packages quicker than using the GUI tool. But you could successfully use a Steam Deck without ever launching into Desktop mode, much less opening a terminal.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The command-line is not just faster, it is also much more universal.

You and I may use different distros and different desktop environments. If you want to create instructions that tell us how to do something using the GUI, there is an excellent chance you need different instructions for each of us. If you instead give us CLI instructions, there is an excellent chance that the same instructions will work for both of us.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

The CLI is not faster for everyone. Especially non IT users who don't know any of the options and would have to search the web every time. And there are so many commands the CLI is useless at. Graphics and presentations a big fail. And few people use CLI for email or spreadsheets.

GUI users have a chance to work out how to use a new GUI 99% of the time, as it is all familiar. No exact syntax to type perfectly or it will fail. On other occasions, web help tells you where an option or command is. There is no need to entirety change the way you work, just for a few times when learning new software.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago

Debian is great for servers, not for desktop novices. Use a state of the art desktop OS like fedora (atomic) and you won't face a lot of those issues.

Yes, linux "has a problem" with nvidia but we should blame nvidia, not linux.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Well, the good news is that of course you can use Linux with only as much command line interaction as you get in Windows.

The bad news is that the command line REALLY isn't what's keeping people away from Linux.

Hell, in that whole list, the most discouraging thing for a new user isn't the actually fairly simple and straightforward terminal commands, it's this:

Here's where it gets a little trickier: Scrolling on Firefox is rough, cause the preinstalled old version doesn't have Wayland support enabled. So you either have to enable Wayland support or install the Flatpak version of Firefox.

This is a completely inscrutable sentence. It is a ridiculous notion, it brings up so many questions and answers none. It relates to concepts that have no direct equivalent in other platforms and even a new user that successfully follows this post and gets everything working would come out the other end without understanding why they had to do what they did or what the alternative was.

I've been saying it for literal decades.

It's not the terminal, it's not the UX not looking like Windows.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I fully agree, regarding Debian. I would never recommend it to any new user. However, every single distro actually targeted at new users doesn't have this issue.
And if I hadn't known about this issue before, I probably wouldn't even have noticed that scrolling is a bit smoother after the adjustment.

Bonus: Windows has enough of these completely inscrutable mannerisms as well. Want to change the icon of a program pinned to the taskbar? You'll find the shortcut file in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
Want to switch to a different standard browser? In Windows 11, you have to set that for every single file type a browser can open separately.
Want to write a lengthy formula in Excel? There's a hard-coded 255 character limit.
The list goes on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, for sure. If you just drop Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever on a machine where everything works for you out of the box the experience is not hard to wrap your head around. Even if one thing needs you to write something in a terminal following a tutorial, that's also frequent in Windows troubleshooting.

The problem is that all those conversations about concurrent standards for desktop environments, display protocols, software distribution methods and whatnot are hard to grasp across the board. If and when you hit an issue that requires wrapping your head around those that's where the familiarity with Winddows' messy-but-straightforward approach becomes relevant.

In my experience it's not going through the motions while everything works or using the system itself, it's the first time you try to go off the guardrails or you encounter a technical issue. At that point is when the hidden complexity becomes noticeable again. Not because the commands are text, but because the underlying concepts are complex and have deep interdependencies that don't map well to other systems and are full of caveats and little differences depending on what combination of desktop and distro you're trying to use.

That's the speed bump. It really, really isn't the terminal.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Stupidest motherfuckers I have seen in my life could operate computers back when the only "command line" was an actual programming language in the 1980s and also during the MS-DOS boom

This CLI fear is something completely unfounded

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

It's not always *fear *of the CLI. I am not interested in memorising a whole load of unnecessary stuff I'd need, to start using a CLI, that I can already do productively with the GUIs. I'm not in IT. I know my way around GUI applications quite well. So it's more worthwhile extending my knowledge there.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Everyone who has an Android phone "uses Linux without the command line." Your question, however, seems to be "is it possible to play Windows games on Debian without the command line" (edit: or, more broadly, "how suitable is Debian as a Windows replacement") which is not the same question.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

"GUI makes easy tasks easier, CLI makes hard tasks possible". I'm a Debian user and lately I haven't been touching terminal at all, unless it's an inherently terminal task like programing. My only complaint now is that when I did an grub update my config file got reverted to the defaults. All of a sudden I couldn't boot to Windows from grub because os-prober got dissabled (I'm dualbooting). Fixing that is not hard, as you only have to uncomment one line in the config, but it's annoying that it happend.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I use Mint and have yet to use the command line. I browse the web and play games on steam. All of this works right out of the box.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

Interresting list, thanks.

Regarding the Firefox Wayland variable, it should be possible to add the line in ~/.profile instand. And that file can simple be opend by showing hidden files in the file manager of choice.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Absolutely and has been the case for years...

Have no fear, the Penguin is friendly

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Yes. I've been using Linux for over 10 years without touching the command line. I used Ubuntu up to Unity, then switched to Kubuntu and Plasma. I'm not in IT, so I don't need IT stuff. It all works by GUI. People who haven't tried it might say it's not possible. But they are not speaking from experience. Some others, not interested usability, don't understand why GUIs are so successful and dominant. Which is absolutely fine, as long as they don't try think they are suddenly knowledgeable in usability, and have tried 10+ years of GUI only.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

If you're not going to be tinkering, and all you want is your computer to work, absolutely.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (21 children)

why are people so terrified of the terminal?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

They’ve been raised on systems where you don’t need it, and they fundamentally don’t understand how one talks to a computer. It’s actually quite a bit to learn, and if you didn’t grow up doing it, it seems like a big cliff.

[–] ScreaminOctopus 8 points 6 months ago

Because until you spend many hours getting used to it, it's annoying as hell. I'm a longtime bash user, but if I have to do anything in PowerShell, it sucks. Bash is even less friendly to novice/casual users due to tools like awk and sed being totally obtuse. When you're unfamiliar with the workflow, not being to see everything you're able to do at a glance is pretty frustrating.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Yes.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Yes, absolutely. But I also wouldn't want to. GUI tools have their issues sometimes. The command line is basically raw compute power.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Kind of, but why? I understand why the CLI is intimidating to a newbie but it's not some arcane magic for leet haxxorz, but a poweful tool that everyone can learn to use. We Linux users weren't born knowing how to use it just like a Windows user wasn't born knowing how to use Control Panel. It's a different way of working with a computer, but with patience and learning it will become a useful asset, I can't imagine using a computer without it now.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Is it possible to do work in a shed without using a drill?

It is good of you to do this work and post your findings, so no offense intended, but this command line meme is better off not being spread. The terminal is a tool and should be used when it's needed. Time spent worrying about this is time that could be spent making it easier to understand.

I was introduced to the terminal by a friend so I don't know of a good starting tutorial for newbies. I wasn't interested until I saw you could use the output of one command as the input of another command using a "pipe", the | character on the keyboard.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

It’s just generally faster to use the terminal if you know what you’re doing.

It's also true for other distros. Not because they have poor GUI tools but because CLI is faster than GUI if you know what you are doing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Many times you need to use the terminal with Win and Mac too. Sometimes something goes wrong, or you need to enable something that doesn't have a UI. So in the last few years, I've used the terminal with these OSes too. So I don't see why you wouldn't use the terminal with Linux too.

The only time you wouldn't use the terminal at all, is if someone else is your sysadmin, and you're just driving a browser or a couple of apps, as a plain user. Then sure, you'll never need to touch the terminal. My mom only uses a browser for example on her linux laptop. It's good enough for her. But when there's an update or anything else such, I'm the one dealing with it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

People claiming Linux isn’t a viable alternative cause you can’t run it without using the command line.

Even in 2024, many people begin using GNU/Linux with Arch Linux or Ubuntu with apt-get, then later they complain that Linux is not for average users. Maybe the community needs more GUI only tutorials.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not a fan of this approach. I think the idea that users should never touch a command line is an inherently proprietary philosophy. Without the command line, at any given moment, the user is fundamentally limited to whatever options the developer elected to offer.

I think a good GUI will assist a user in learning text configuration and command line functions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

What does a command line have to do with being proprietary?

I strongly disagree because users don't WANT to learn or use a terminal and you can't change their minds.

[–] Grass 7 points 6 months ago (8 children)

i still don't understand why people are scared of command line when a lot of the fixes for windows bullshit require it in addition to registry editing, and also sometimes gpedit which is enterprise only now iirc.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Yup, I don't understand it either. Many "how to fix ..." articles involve quite a lot powershell magic. And I say "magic" because IMO they are often essentially API calls which I find far harder to grasp than config files that follow some logic and help me understand what is interacting how.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Most users of Windows aren't editing the registry, no matter what problems they encounter.

For power users that do use regedit, I'd argue there's still a gap between that and using a shell. The registry can be edited entirely with the Windows graphical utility, after all.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

My wife uses Linux and barely touches the CLI. And when she does, she is only running 1 or 2 specific commands I found for her, that are tied to her needs. But, her main computing device is her phone, so the laptop only gets use a couple of times a month.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

OpenSUSE has YAST2-GUI GTK. Full GUI for everything, users, hardware review, even fiddling with kernel, services, or editting text config files via admin gui.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Its not possible to use windows to its fullest without the command line. You can muddle along and miss out without it but you will always hit a point where the cli is the best way forward.

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