this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Linux Memes
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If you need a program to do something, not look pretty (photo apps, video apps, etc), why include graphics?
GUIs are more intuitive for more people. It’s also nice to be able adjust setting with a drop down or radio, without knowing any commands in a new program.
That’s not to say cli is bad, or cannot be learnt, but that there are pros and cons.
The pro being that you get the power of linguistic composition. The con being that its less discoverable.
Ever spoken to a person before?
I speak to my wife every day.
Suspiciously not specifying, so I assume she's a robot.
In a GUI application, you can usually just put less often used capabilities into a menu bar, then the user can find it there. In a TUI application, the user will need to spend time to learn it, with the danger of forgetting it. And on the modern AI slop infested web, "Googling" became harder, and I managed to nuke a Raspberry Pi installation from an article that told me how to set paths in Linux.
man <program>or
<program> --helpYeah to most people that's more effort than going through menu's. Especially people with photographic memory benefit from GUI (don't remember name of thing you're looking for but you know where it can be found). Terminal for daily usage is definitely not for everyone.
I knew about -h but I didn't know man. And that's as someone who's been using Linux for two years and has an engineering degree. Gui is simple in that natural exploration will allow people to intuit where to look for things. Bad gui is worse, as anyone who's worked with erp software knows, but the command line is less intuitive for exploration for many people and that means they build skills in gui.
For me, terminal programs make a lot more sense. They’re also easier to make. GUI limits where you can run and what it can do. I mostly code server side stuff, but sometimes I make web and desktop apps, so I’ve got plenty of experience coding them all. I also understand most people don’t want what I want or like what I like.