No, you DON'T need to use the terminal in Linux

The Linux terminal is a wonderful tool, but in a vast majority of cases you DO NOT need to use it. Chances are there is a graphic utility to get done whatever it is you're trying to do. With that said the terminal is awesome and everyone should learn how to use it. Here are some resources.

Videos Featured:

My Workstation (PAID LINKS)

[altrogeruvah]

As a non-programmer, one of the things that used to scare me was people doing everything in the terminal on Linux, honestly, I thought they were just flexing like "oh look I'm a hacker", however now that I use Linux, I understand how native the terminal is to Linux's framework and way of thinking that it doesn't hurt learning it and actually feels pretty good and fast to use. I definitely think you can do without it though, skeuomorphic and easy-to-understand GUIs are made for a reason.

[markharrisllb]

As a boomer newbie I’m really enjoying learning the terminal, I’m no rush to learn everything but every day I learn a little more. I do cut and paste commands but I do try to read what each instruction does.

I’ve just noticed my name in the Techie+, thank you

[RetosSpace]

Ah thanks for this, Noob here, Swindows user all my life, 48yo, on Linux for 7 serious months, its a hard learning curve but i love the process and will never go back to Swindows, not that i used it properly anyway, Terminal Scary but im hanging in there thanks to channels like yourself!! Well done and keep up the great work, greetings from Cape Town, SOuth Africa

[eduardomunhoz]

I'm somewhere in the middle y'know, I don't do everything throgh GUI nor do I do it through the terminal, it really just depends on the task, somethings are simpler than others, the truth is whatever you feel comfortable with is what you should use

[crazychicken]

No you don’t need to use the terminal, but you should. Again, this isn’t windows, don’t treat it as such. Accept the terminal. Be the terminal

[KuruGDI]

You have two options:
1) Make everything noob friendly and *never* let the user interact with how the OS actually works (which leads to having a butt full of settings or to not be able to configure certain things)
2) Educate people about what certain commands do, what the terminal does and which commands you should not use.

I think people do not like to use the terminal, because they don't really know what they are doing or what they do to a certain application. It's much easier to mess something up when you don't know what you are typing or what you should not type ("sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb1" anybody? - I don't have jack shit of an idea what this command does, but the websites says it's going to wipe sdb). If you have a GUI and switch a button you know the setting is on or off.
4:12 is what I mean. "/etc/fatab" is a path, but what does "nano" do? I have never used fedora so I have no idea what this does. (Yes, a <5 min google search would have solved the problem for me, but the "Did I do something wrong?"-scenario causes anxiety in non-pro users. And who wants to use a OS that causes anxiety on use?

I think people don't care about the operating system that much, but they do care about the usability of the device and it should be reliable and somewhat noobproof. There is no use in a powerful OS when the wrong command will cause a meltdown.

[tiefkluehlfeuer]

you havemore things to remember for using the terminal. In (good) gui you can always look what is being presented (like a settings icon) and work your way.
When you know all the commands though, the terminal is faster.
The question is, how expemsive is memory vs cognition in your brain.

[psiah]

One thing that frustrates me, though, is that it's supposed to be an *option*, it's supposed to be about *choice*, but if I want to edit a text file or move files around as root, I'm stuck in command line mode, and there are roadblocks to getting around that. I know my way around well enough to do that, sure, but when I'm already ten directories deep in two different folders and need to move a couple files from one to the other, or edit a single line of a text file or something real quick, it's kind of a pain to mode switch, and while apparently there used to be plenty of ways to do so with gui by default, it seems maintainers (kde, for instance) are going out of their ways to block gui options.

And it's frustrations like this that are more or less keeping me from fully making the switch.

[scottwatrous]

Terminals suck because theres no contrast or visual organization or brancjing options so its nice to have a command line, like in AutoCAD, where I can just type the command I want to engage, but theres also just menus and buttons and graphics going on to click so that you never need to know all the commands to proceed. It's just when you do you can skip ahead if that is more intuitive.

[Gruuvin]

"No, you don't need to use the terminal in Linux"
You also don't need to use toilet paper, but you'll have a better experience if you do.

[moister]

It's a tough process at the beginning when you are new, i'd say depends on the application and if it's necessary at all means to use the terminal.

Most of the everyday apps comes in packages anyway and the ones that not, you can install it through the terminal with an instruction set on the page for every distribution avaible.

I'm more on the middle road.

[Zeldon]

Shoutout to the graphical tools boot repair and grub customizer. Came in handy a couple of times when the grub bootloader got overwritten by a new install and I didn't want to go through the process of manually editing it.

Personally I prefer graphical interfaces, but will use the terminal if necessary. Terminal is slow if I don't know exactly what I'm doing. Graphical interfaces are often easier to understand at a glance.

[TheMyname]

My advise would be: Do what you are comfortable with!
For thing I do regularly, I use the terminal because it is much faster. But for tasks I do only once or twice it takes more time to learn or relearn it every so often than use a grafical user interface, gui.
It depends on the task I want to perform and my skill level for this task.
For new users: Don't be afraid of the terminal, you can learn terminal one command at the time. 😉

[christianemden]

Simple answer if you deal just with your own problems, you have the choice of doing it via gui or the terminal. If i ask for somebody’s help with a problem, using terminal commands allows to provide solutions that are not limited to a single distribution or distribution number. A terminal command is usually not ambiguous

[BUDA]

I always added flatpak and flathub via the terminal, I have no clue if its possible on the GUI, I guess so

[crazycatman]

At first: generally thank you for your videos.
A very important point for doing certain things in terminal (editing fstab is a good example): you can do it on nearly any linux distribution exactly the same or nearly the same way. Doing certain things in the GUI always depends on which GUI you are using! KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, LXQt, Xfce - to name just a few - all do things differently with different GUI-frontends…
That said: I have the strong opinion and advice that nobody should just "copy and paste" terminal commands from some internet page without understanding them properly!

[derekr]

If you want to use the terminal do so, if you want to use a graphical manner then do so. Why do people have to worry about what is used as long as the job gets done.Keep up the great videos Brandon they are always worth watching.

[daringcuteseal]

Typing "hello terminal what do I type here" for the first time is amazing feeling that you'll never experience anymore

[phenelzne]

The terminal is an essential thing to learn.
If you are someone who just uses the browser and nothing more, then you can live without it, but if you want to do any kind of troubleshooting there just isn't a way to do it with a GUI, so if something happens to your system the first thing that's going to happen is you will be prompted to a command prompt. Its also the only way you can do anything in all the minimal distros (Arch, Gentoo, Debian)

[AbdelaliAbdallah]

Thank you for your content, even though am advance linux user but I watch your videos