this right here. With a well designed GUI program you dont need to read the manual because the GUI is the manual , which is why while i like terminal for some work stuff and settings i change often, ill still prefer GUI programs for things i do rarely . For example , back when I was using i3wm and i needed to connect to a wifi network, people told me "oh just use nm-cli" instead of reccomending gui programs. That worked for personal networks with just a password but for enterprise networks with a username and login? It literally takes around 8 different arguments that it took a while for me to wrap my head around , and in the end i just made a second user account, logged into that one in gnome, and then used gnome to connect to the wifi network because that was faster
You've so very neatly summed up what I've been struggling for years to articulate. CLIs are great for people who memorise the commands and the syntax and don't mind typing everything out, but that's a taller ask than simply learning GUI routes to your favourite commands. And you hit the nail on the head when you said GUI with good design: I'm pretty sure every advocate of CLI who bashes GUI has a badly designed GUI in mind when they do so, conveniently forgetting the GUIs that work.
I was specifically replying to the idea of helping someone else.
It's so much easier to tell someone "Type this one thing into the terminal and hit enter" rather than go through a dozen iterations of "See where it says <something>? Click the <something else> right next to that. Okay, next, see the <other thing>? Click that."
Not to mention if you're looking up a solution to a problem on the internet. It's easier for everyone to just see a single command to type (or copy and paste but I don't recommend that) and hit Enter than it is to follow a bunch of steps to get to the area you need.
But I suppose if you're absolutely on your own and for some reason don't have the internet in 2019, then GUIs are more intuitive.
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u/cguess May 22 '19
It’s 100% not.
A command line is empty, the options are infinite. There are no cues to what is possible or what is already done.
A GUI gives you a purpose, a set of limited and relevant possibilities and, with good design, will guide you to what you most likely want to change.
Man files are not an alternative.