this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
136 points (99.3% liked)

technology

24193 readers
392 users here now

On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.

Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I hate Windows. I hate Microslop. I've hated them forever. Not using Windows helps, but I still have to deal with the consequences of everyone else using it!

What I hate most is people absolutely terrified of a *nix terminal, while willing to work around Windows problems via command prompt or messing with the goddamn fucking registry, which is just bloody ridiculous, why not just use fucking config files... but that's a rant for another time - and people looking at this kind of chatbot interface like cutting edge modern technology when it's actually just a CLI that doesn't fucking work. We had these at the dawn of personal computing, except that those ones worked and gave the same response to the same command every time! Look, I don't like using a terminal either, but at least be honest and consistent about it, people.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] alexei_1917@hexbear.net 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

See, that's interesting. Because you tell me I don't need the terminal, while loads of other folks say that yeah, sometimes you do, and that's the best part. Although I suppose a lot of those folks are terminal junkies making some tasks more obtuse on purpose.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 1 points 46 minutes ago* (last edited 45 minutes ago)

In a lot of cases, providing instructions to run a specific command in the terminal is the least ambiguous way to do something. Like if you want to give somebody instructions on how to add a line to the end of a configuration file, you need to consider that they might be using one of a number of desktop environments, file browsers, and text editors, and that maybe the file browser doesn't display hidden files, or maybe the user has a different locale / language activated and the menu options are named differently. Or you can tell them to run echo "fluffy_cat_mode=on" >> ~/.config/some_app.conf which will work regardless of all these possibilities.

Obviously there are tasks which can only be accomplished in the terminal, but there are also many tasks which are trivial to do through some settings menu or application which are still given as terminal commands for the sake of specificity.

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 1 points 1 hour ago

It depends on what you want to do. Like, if you're just doing basic computer tasks, you can get away without touching the command line. For most other things, there are GUI front ends or utilities that you can find or use, but in some cases learning to use the command line is quicker and easier. Or you make the mistake of starting a home server and suddenly you have to get comfy with the command line because it's the only way to do stuff.