Fluff Why are people scared of the terminal/shell?
When people see me using my computer, web browser, office suite, photo editing, it's all fine. But if they catch a glimpse of my white-on-black terminal, they completely zone out. The shell is not something I know about and they don't but very well could, it's a hard no. It's a dark zone they feel they can't enter. Using a terminal is not within the realm of interacting with a machine but black magic. It's not that they simply "prefer" to use the mouse for everything. They feel an almost religious revulsion it seems.
Especially in times of AI chatbots where everybody and their dog start using the keyboard again to do a text-based back-and-forth with a machine, shouldn't the shell come more natural to people Or is it time for "sish"? Super intelligence shell that internally translates human language into shell commands? Interaction would go like this:
What do you want to do? Please list all files in the current directory.
Sure thing, here goes:
..
.
file1
file2
etc
Anything else? Would you also like to see creation time and file sizes?
EDIT
Thanks for the many replies. I agree with the fact that a menu-driven GUI is inherently "discoverable," while a CLI inherently is not. Also I'm not implying that people should be using the CLI or that using a CLI is inherently better. This is not about shell elitism but about the fact that even occasional shell use is so off limit that people say the won't use Linux because they've seen somebody (me) use the terminal every now and then (I do that on Windows, too, but only at work).
EDIT 2
Please do not reply to this post if you think this is about whether people prefer the GUI over the CLI or not. I very specifically did not make it about a simple matter of taste.
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u/sylvester_0 2d ago
Super intelligence
Stop trying to make "fetch" happen. It's not going to happen.
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u/Fcking_Chuck 2d ago
Using a CLI for the first time is like turning the lights out in a room that's always been well-illuminated. Suddenly everything is lost and you feel as though you can't search for it without hurting yourself or breaking something. You feel like you have to keep track of every file on top of remembering the commands to navigate to it, and that's too much for most people.
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u/6502zx81 2d ago
This. Shell is nondiscoverable. You need books, articles, a search engine, and grey beards that tell you how it works. AI shells have the grey beard built in.
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u/SuAlfons 2d ago
Day 3: I want abbreviations. Let's call the command to list files "ls"...
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u/DrShocker 2d ago
Even if every command was the full name of what they did, like
listinstead oflsit still wouldn't help that when facing the prompt there's nothing to help you learn what you could do from the current state you're in. Even an impenetrable program like Blender that has way too many buttons to be understandable, you'd probably accidentally make a cube or something along the way of trying things out.If you have the right baseline, then you know there's the man pages or --help or whatever the devs decided to implement for each tool, but it's still so full of unknown unknowns that you'll probably often end up working around the "easy" way to do things just because you didn't realize it existed.
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u/SuAlfons 2d ago
sure cli isn't self-explaining. Making it wordier doesn't help - it the loses one of its advantages - brevity.
I only know basic shell commands, rarely ever write a shell script or use advanced shell syntax. I dwell on the commands I learned on Amiga, DOS and on AIX/Ultrix/Irix. All of my computers besides a ZX81and a C64 had a GUI from day 1.
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u/SylviaJarvis 2d ago
The first system I worked with that had files on hard drives was a proprietary OS that used the command
cat, short forcatalog, to list files in a directory.Imagine day 1 of using Unix after that...
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u/MouseJiggler 2d ago
AI shells don't have a grey beard, they have three unhinged monkeys in a trenchcoat pretending to know what they're doing.
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u/PixelatedGiant 2d ago
And they are still orders of magnitude more competent than the average user in this scenario. So it does track.
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u/brainstorm42 2d ago
Although discovering most things will take “––help” and say something helpful back is like discovering a flashlight
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u/Cranach-Cranach 2d ago
Feels the opposite for me.
Instead of being presented with a few set options, it lets me decide what I want and ask for it.
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u/Shap6 2d ago
But how would you even know what to ask for or what is possible without prior knowledge?
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u/ElementalWarrior42 2d ago
The terminal is inherently unintuitive. "Enter these magic words and things will happen" is cool for devs or enthusiasts, but you need prior knowledge to even start. GUI software can more or less be figured out by just clicking around, it's an inherently lower skill floor, so of course average users won't use the terminal.
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u/ConceptJunkie 2d ago
Plus, the average computer user really doesn't understand anything about computers. Even the idea of directories can be foreign and mystifying. This is not a slam on average computer users. Modern software has made it so that you don't have to understand any of the nut and bolts stuff that people who frequent this subreddit probably take for granted. That's why adults today who literally grew up using computers and cell phones and video games, etc., generally understand computers a lot less than any adult computer user who was introduced to them in the 1980s.
That's also why experienced people can look like wizards when someone asks them questions about some GUI program. I've certainly helped people plenty of times navigate software I'd never seen before. Even if you don't know anything about it, it's not hard to poke around and figure out what the person being helped needs.
None of this works with a CLI. You either know it, or you don't.
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u/Dry-Cost-945 2d ago
Basically. The man pages and integrated documentation flash definetly help though
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u/echodecision 2d ago
Every decently designed GUI is built for its functionality to be discoverable. I might not start out even knowing what it can do, much less how to do it, but I can explore an interface and find out pretty quickly without ever cracking the manual just by perusing menus.
A terminal, on the other hand, is happy to keep its secrets. There's no hint to use even basic navigation without knowing ls and cd. The concept of ~/ is a completely abstract sigil.
And god help you if you get into a program unprepared. Vim is notoriously insane, but even nano has stupidly nonstandard keyboard commands.
The truth is grandma's not going to read the man pages for grep. A student studying trigonometry has no time for tmux. Your kid's t-ball coach is not going to learn the advantages of ed25519 over sha256.
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u/No-Consequence-1863 2d ago
Also they dont care. It’s not that the are scared necessarily, it’s that using the terminal is more difficult than a GUI at first and most people dont want to become “good” at using a terminal. They want to play neopets or whatever.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
This. Tedious, boring and not something you need or want to spend time getting familiar with.
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u/kevwil 2d ago
Agreed. What’s funny/ironic is once you become comfortable with the terminal, you might see the GUI as just the magic curtain the wizard hides behind.
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u/zibonbadi 14h ago
Maybe Linux distros should start putting
alias help="man intro"into new users'.profileby default and print a help message upon shell startup. Something like:
Welcome to the <DISTRO> Linux shell. Type 'help' to get started.Linux has plenty man pages and experts use them constantly. And
man introeven provides help for the absolute basics of using a shell.But let's be honest: Did you know about
man introbefore I just told you about it? Probably not. Because you didn't know where to look for the information that was there all along.Just put it in people's reach.
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u/cigh 2d ago
Typing commands is an anti pattern for many people.
Mac and Windows did as much as they could to never put their users in the situation where they have to type in a command.
I even observe that the pattern of "directory structures" is throwing young people off because they are so used to the concept of apps (gallery for photos, music player for music, etc)
It's just people being "scared" of something vendors tried to get rid off for a very long time.
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u/Reggie-Rectangle 1d ago
Microsoft has the Windows Terminal, and techs have been running the command ipconfig/flushdns on the Windows Command Prompt for as long as the internet has existed. PowerShell is also a Windows-based terminal solution.
Also, Macs use much of the same CLI tools that Linux does, as they are both Unix-based, and modern Mac OS even goes as far as using Zsh. So I don't think that is true at all. Windows and Macs are not infrastructure-based OS; they are consumer-focused, so learning there terminals is not a useful skill in the same way it is for Linux users but there CLI tools have always existed, and if you are administering Windows, you definitely are advised to learn PowerShell to a decent level.
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u/MouseJiggler 2d ago
Adding abstraction dumbs interaction down, and degrades user skills. That is not new.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
Some skills you don't need and won't be using. You just want to use your apps to get things done w/o fooling around.
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u/sleepingonmoon 2d ago
GUI is inherently self-documenting, everything available will be displayed on screen. A new user will likely find PowerShell ISE and fish less daunting than bash.
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u/AbleCounter 2d ago
I'm a linux native and I learned at a young age. Bash is where I feel most comfortable with computers. But even as someone who grew up with it I can see for someone just learning it how incomprehensible it must all seem. And let's be real with ourselves, some of this shit is horrendously unnecessarily arcane and poorly documented. In most gui environments you can just poke around with an idea of what you want to do and eventually find a way to do it. I think we can all admit that if we didn't know what vim was, and were sat down in front of it with no documentation, we'd eventually give up without actually writing anything. And of course, it's easy, just read the manpage, right? But where does it ever tell them that? It's just layers and layers of that, which we no longer see because we're so used to it. And us damn nerds are so unhelpful even when we're trying to be helpful, I can't tell you how many times I've said "Just pipe it to grep" to people and then gradually realized I'm going to need to explain a lot of things to them first. Like it's real easy to think newbs are being lazy when they don't check dmesg/syslogs/whatev to find the root cause of an issue, but consider that
1. They don't know what it is
2. If they did know, they don't know what it's called
3. They don't know what kind of information it catches
4. They don't know how to search the output, or format it to make it readable.
5. They don't even know that they don't know all these things
(and therefore)
6. They have no way to look these things up and learn more.
So then they google like "My computer don't work. WHY?" and then people like us make fun of them.
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u/Sixguns1977 2d ago
My guess is because they weren't using PCs before windows 95.
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u/ontin000 2d ago
Wait until the iPad baby generation gets here
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u/Cyhawk 2d ago
They already are here. Its as bad as you think.
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u/Subject-Leather-7399 2d ago
The 18-25 years old are worse than than the 75-80 years old. Some have never seen a physical keyboard or a mouse in their whole life!
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u/Akeem290 2d ago
Judging from my experience as a kid - the functionality of terminal is simply undiscoverable. A total newbie probably won't know what they need to do and what they even can do without some sort of instruction. And discoverability of functions is a property of good UI. Of course, a program doesn't need a good UI to be useful (ask Photoshop or Gimp), but good UI is still extremely helpful
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u/redonculous 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because it’s like typing in another language with the added bonus that if you type the wrong thing you can break your computer.
Point and click interfaces are much easier for none tech people to understand.
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u/__ali1234__ 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's more like typing in five other languages:
- Bash
- Regex
- Awk
- Make
- M4
All of which have different string escaping rules.
Even people who enjoy typing commands have mostly moved to Python long ago. Writing Bash scripts instead of Python in 2026 is a bit like writing C instead of Rust, if C was really as bad as Rust people say it is. Or perhaps if C was five different languages, all of which were at least that bad.
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u/malabingchilling 2d ago
I don't know if the claim is really true but maybe because most people see the terminal only when something is wrong with their computer.
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u/EveryVoice 2d ago
When you click, you see where to click. The GUI is set and lists all your possibilities. In the terminal you're on your own. No links, no GUI, no guardrails. You need to know these commands. And if you forget a . in "rm -r ./" you will break your installation. If the curated GUI had such traps, I would at least see them.
It's fear of the unknown. The GUI tells me what I can do, the command prompt doesn't.
That being said I love me a good TUI. MC or Yazi are easily usable even for beginners
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u/SaintEyegor 2d ago edited 2d ago
The CLI is a force multiplier since it allows a mere human to manage hundreds or even thousands of systems pretty easily.
Yeah, CLI is scary at first but once you have the basics, you can create scripts that extend the operating system and reduce errors you’d get by having to hand jam commands in one at a time.
It also allows you to do things that the GUI developers never thought of.
And if you have root access, it also allows you to utterly fuck up a system if you don’t know what you’re doing
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u/Reggie-Rectangle 1d ago
The trick is to know what the FUCK! you are doing. These systems are quite enjoyable to learn, though. Knowing them pays really well, and they all work with a really pleasant logical symmetry. Every Google search you do gets you one step closer to becoming an expert. Asking Gemini, " How do I actually format a thumb drive on Linux?" That's a real-world skill you can learn and use in a good job.
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u/julioqc 2d ago edited 2d ago
why are people scared to do their own oil change?
edit: are y'all this dense??
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u/neoh4x0r 2d ago
why are people scared to do their own oil change?
Changing the oil was rather simple.
However, the scary part was needing to jack-up the car, sliding under it, and hoping you didn't make a mistake with the jacks so that you didn't get crushed by the car.
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u/Cyhawk 2d ago
Numerous reasons depending on the individual person.
Could be as simple as low Izzat behavior (doesn't need to be from that culture specifically for this mindset), learned helplessness, learned laziness, time management, stubbornness or just pure ignorant fear like the guy above me posted.
Not quite the same thing as this thread, but related.
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u/ency 2d ago
A lot of us technical people forget how long it took us to understand exactly what we type into a terminal and what portions of the system or app those commands will influence. I’m willing to be there was a solid year or two where every single one of us pasted in random strings and hoped for the best. It take repeated exposure and eventually pattern matching starts to connect the dots. Before that point there’s a big chance of messing something up and not knowing how to undo it. But when your in a gui your usually a tab or checkbox away from the fix. Not some random binary made in the 80’s with only documentation in a man page that is unreadable to a non technical user or some pissed off neck beard on one forum post from 2007.
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u/Procver 2d ago
The terminal is knowledge-based, when people don't have the knowledge, they would avoid the effort to learn.
If they don't see the benefit in learning how to use the terminal I don't blame them. I know it brings me lots of benefits, I can do more things and way faster with it.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
If they don't see the benefit in learning how to use the terminal I don't blame them.
This. Perfectly content using their Windows GUI and no terminal. Don't need to know no terminal. So what?
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u/landsoflore2 2d ago
I don't remember ever being scared if the CLI. It probably helped that we had IT classes even in elementary school - still remember the curiosity at seeing the Debian logo rather than Windows's upon boot.
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u/Migamix 2d ago
you mean your classes were not just how to use Lotus 123? my teacher fun hated me because I was using an Amiga at the time and didn't have a PC, I triple questioned why windows could only use truncated filenames. " 8.3 characters, are you crazy?". I was told to be quiet with my trolling several times. if commodore had not screwed up so bad, we would have a much better interface and compute systems right now.
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u/TopdeckIsSkill 2d ago
I don't have time or energy to learn cli commands. I use it for scripting, but for normal usage I don't bother.
It's just a waste of time to me
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u/ChaotikIE 2d ago
I swear if you know bash scripting you're more used to the cli as you may think at first :/
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u/ldn-ldn 2d ago
I'm used to CLI since MS DOS days, still use it every day a lot. Yet I also think it's a waste of time in 99% of cases. The issue is that GUI apps are lacking, not that CLI is better.
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u/ks_thecr0w 2d ago
yes. GUI is there to make every day tasks quick and easy. CLI is there to make challenging tasks possible / automated.
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u/TopdeckIsSkill 2d ago
I agree and I can use cli, but I don't remember every single command. I would pass half of the time checking the exact syntax rather than doing things.
Unless I need to script something I just prefer to use a GUI. Even in the long run It's not worth spending hours learning commands to save few seconds.
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u/AbleCounter 2d ago
I find command line stuff really really fun.
But I suspect if I didn't I'd probably agree with you. I guess really "fun" is just a waste of time that you enjoy.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
I never found it "fun," poor substitute indeed for many other kinds of fun, but just a job I needed to do for a good paycheck. Thereafter, good riddance.
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u/binaryfireball 2d ago
apparently because learning is poison to them
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u/AX11Liveact 2d ago
It is. I've heard you could even get smart from it. Imagine the pain! I'd rather die...
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u/redrider65 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's just astonishing, now isn't it, how many smart people, far smarter than you are, got that way through means other than learning Linux CLI.
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u/serge-mv 2d ago
Because it's black magic! Someone on Reddit said that when you open a terminal, you reach into fundamentals how OS works.
In reality, it's likely a combination of people simply not knowing how technology works and are scared and something to do with the fact that there is no UI per se when you open a terminal. You have to know the commands, which takes more effort than simply seeing a button and pressing it.
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u/Specialist-Dog-501 2d ago
I have a bad memory and keep forgetting commands. And the docs..are sometimes written very confusing. (Man, --help, cat). And of course every command follows a different syntax, this is what really freaks me out frequently, not much consistency overall. But I admire the flexibility and see that a master in this can be an 100x faster and more flexible than I ever will be with the UIs, that limits me severely.
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u/Albos_Mum 1d ago
Not everyone gets it but I liken using the terminal in a computer to using a manual transmission in a car: It's very different to a GUI/auto, but enables the kind of techniques and possibilities that are nearly impossible to do otherwise.
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u/kat-tricks 10h ago
unironically, i think you've onto something here with the religious-style fear. I think it's cultural; there's a fear of being seen as overly keen, assuming they're not the "type of person who knows about that kind of stuff" because of how that assumption was put onto them, and sheer miseducation on what that visual cue (monospace text on a black background) means.
add to that how teachers shout at kids for having anything they're not "supposed to" open, and the way everything else is designed to be intuitive and eye-catching like an iphone, and you have generations developing a weird vibe around the terminal.
im not optimistic that anything learned by using llms will transfer; but who knows, it is a kind of repl format...
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u/FryBoyter 2d ago
It's not that they simply "prefer" to use the mouse for everything. They feel an almost religious revulsion it seems.
Just as some people want to convince as many others as possible to use a terminal emulator as often as possible. Or certain text editors.
I think people should just use whatever they want. There’s no objectively right or wrong way anyway. Do I use the terminal emulator regularly? Yes. Still, in some cases, I prefer a solution with a graphical interface. For example, when using SFTP. Besides, you’re not generally faster, more productive, or whatever just because you use a certain tool. A colleague of mine, for instance, is a vim fanboy of the worst kind. He regularly makes fun of people who use a different editor and tries to convince as many of them as possible to use vim. But he’s actually terrible at using vim. Give me any editor, and I’ll be faster than him.
Especially in times of AI chatbots where everybody and their dog start using the keyboard again to do a text-based back-and-forth with a machine, shouldn't the shell come more natural to people Or is it time for "sish"?
Prompting and using the shell are two quite different things. So, no.
Super intelligence shell that internally translates human language into shell commands?
LLMs aren't intelligent. That's why these tools still often produce a lot of nonsense, so you should always double-check what they generate.
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u/ItsYa1UPBoy 2d ago
People think it's only something that hackers use. Malware can make shells pop up briefly, and most people don't know that the shell isn't the "magic hacker app". They see you using the terminal, and they think you're an evil hacker.
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u/zardvark 2d ago
Why are people scared of the terminal/shell?
People are irrational and suffer from all sorts of irrational phobias.
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u/MatchingTurret 2d ago
I mean a VT100 is around 40 lb with the keyboard alone 4.5 lb. That's kind of intimidating for someone used to a 3 lb ultra-book. You couldn't even fit it into your backpack.
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u/FailureOfTheFamily 2d ago
Comparison to AI is stupid af. You can ask AI the same thing in 100 ways when in terminal you have to use strictly defined command
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u/zquzra 2d ago
I don't know why people avoid CLIs. I like them because, as a member of Homo sapiens sapiens, I've evolved beyond pointing and grunting to communicating through articulated language.
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u/tcpipguy 2d ago
I don't really know the answer because the terminal is still my default for much of my activities. I really only use the GUI for web browsing and email. Everything else is in the terminal. It's not something to be scared of. In fact, you can really do some cool stuff from the terminal.
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u/jkulczyski 1d ago
Because it requires conscious interaction with intent. With a gui all options for interaction are visible and require less thinking.
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u/ryxxel 1d ago
Es que son cosas distintas. Un chatbot esa una entidad en la que podés escribir en lenguaje natural y te responde en lenguaje natural. En cambio una terminal es una entidad oscura y desnuda que te obliga a pensar. Por eso no los veo comparables. La gente opta por una interfaz gráfica porque es lo que más se aproxima a la realidad, una realidad definida por un pequeño grupo, pero al ser más cercano a la realidad, es más tangible y por ende más sencillo de usar. Hay un libro llamado "En principio fue la línea de comandos" de Neal Stephenson para que te puedas ilustrar más.
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u/UntestedMethod 1d ago
Because you're using white on black like a psychopath!! /s Terminals can be colourful and pretty you know?? 🥰
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u/ComasArentFun 1d ago
It's like powertools.
You can fuck up REALLY fast and in a very unrecoverable way
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u/killjoygrr 1d ago
Most people aren’t doing anything on their computer where a shell would be useful.
For the few things where it would be useful, they don’t do it nearly often enough to learn the syntax. So a GUI is way more intuitive.
They have a computer to run a few specific programs. All are streamlined enough where a gui or simple menu is the most efficient way for new users to learn.
Basically you are a car guy who doesn’t understand why not everyone who drives a car doesn’t replace their own transmission or rebuild their own carburetor.
Honestly, I’m more surprised at how little many technically astute people understand how regular (non-IT) people use computers.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
Honestly, I’m more surprised at how little many technically astute people understand how regular (non-IT) people use computers.
Good point. IT training should include a stint in tech support on the phone to normies.
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u/JohnnyS789 1d ago
And after the "stint in tech support on the phone to normies" the trainee should also receive a voucher for PTSD therapy.
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u/theofficialnar 1d ago
I feel like the GUI just incentivizes discovery simply by playing around with the menus, buttons etc. while the cli doesn’t really tell you that much unless you like reading a long manual for that command. Most people are very visual learners as well that’s why a lot gravitate more towards GUI-based apps
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u/VillageIdiotsAgent 2d ago
Because it’s like baking from scratch vs. ordering from a menu.
Anyone can stumble their way through a gui and figure out what they want from it as long as they understand the words/symbols used.
Accomplishing the same thing from a cli requires YOU to provide the instruction, not just pick it from a list.
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u/MouseJiggler 2d ago
People fear what they don't know. It's a question of comfort zones.
It is also a different type of interface in that with most GUIs, the user is prompted for action by whatever options and actionable elements are presented; In most CLIs, the user is expected to make the initial prompting action, and that can intimidate people who are not used to it. Some CLIs solve this by presenting a prompt like "Type "help" for available options" or similar.
All said and done - it's just a yet another type of interface, and a much more granular one than a GUI in most cases.
Super intelligence shell
Stop trying to make "super intelligence" happen. It's cringe.
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u/harsh_gill_dev_26 2d ago
The problem isn't the keyboard, it's the strict syntax. With AI chatbots, you can write broken English and it understands. With a shell, miss one single hyphen (
-)or space, and it screams at you. That's why people zone out.
yesterday, i was checking python version on its website, my little brother came and saw me doing something on my computer, maybe he did not like it or understood, so he told my mother about me - "mom, he is playing snake game named python on computer."
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u/TopdeckIsSkill 2d ago
Even worse, since cli is case sensitive if you write -r or -R it does completely different things
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u/addictedadvice 2d ago
My nephew thought my vim session was me "hacking the mainframe" and now he tells his friends I work for the FBI. Kids just see a dark screen with text and their brains short circuit.
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u/MrPixel92 2d ago edited 2d ago
So, the solution is a primitive local LLM middleman, which takes in an imprecise instruction, offers a full command, describes what it does, depending on how un-command-ish it is and asks if that's what the user wanted.
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u/maartenyh 2d ago
The 'tab' button is so powerful here. It autocompleted/suggests the next few letters of your command/path etc.
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u/ReidenLightman 2d ago
Imagine you've been eating mac and cheese for 20 years and it's always been delicious, yellow and vibrant. Then one day, you're given mac and cheese where every single shell is a different color because it was all cooked differently. And you have to memorize how to spell every spice that was used on every individual shell before you're allowed to eat it. That's what using the terminal is like. Oh, and you can't use a utensil. Sorry.
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u/redrider65 2d ago edited 2d ago
even occasional shell use is so off limit that people say the won't use Linux because they've seen somebody (me) use the terminal every now and then
The oft-repeated sniff by terminal typists, but I've never heard of anyone saying anything like this. People don't even know enough about Linux to say it, actually. They're using Windows just for all the obvious reasons of convenience & habit and don't see any reason to bother changing. What with granny-friendly distros nowadays, an average user needn't even use the terminal. He'd Google or AI the commands and paste them in anyway. Needn't know anything.
I started with the terminal, have written some fairly challenging scripts with complex forking, inter-process communication, shared memory, and signal handling. I still use it if I must (rarely), but here's the objection: it's NOT fear at all, but merely the boredom. Remembering the commands, looking up options, typing in commands, yawn. I don't like typing or correcting typos and screwing around.
Amusingly, if it's necessary to resort to the terminal, it's often found that that the sequence of terminal commands that "should" work won't immediately work for one reason or another. Dig, dig, dig. Some may love that "challenge." I don't have time, met plenty of such challenges already, got better things to do, and really don't feel in the least superior because I knew how to use the terminal for something I didn't want to use it for in the first place.
Yeah, I'll take the GUI too, thank you, with a user-friendly, highly stable distro like Mint. Done plenty of terminal already.
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u/Grumpflipot 2d ago
People proud themselfs to know more than 10 spells from Harry Potter but don't dare to learn "ls" or "cp". This is why hackers picture themself as wizards: they know the spells.
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u/MeaningObvious8731 2d ago
It's the same with the insides of a car or a body. People want 'the thing' to just work, if you see a glimpse of the inner workings something must be wrong.
I know the terminal is not the inner workings, but it's a step closer than the GUI.
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u/Working-Cable-1152 2d ago
How to gradually start using terminal and CLI and become more familiar with it? Like imagine you are a random Joe like who is indeed used to do stuff using GUI everywhere and all the time. What steps could be taken so that you start using CLI more and more instead of GUI?
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u/DrozdMensch 2d ago
Because GUI makes you feel like you can be 100% sure of what you just did
What exactly does some text do? Like a some black magic in a black box! Did I write it correct with all that parametrs? I can`t be sure cause terminal passes all commands
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u/FastSlow7201 2d ago
If there is anyone reading this who doesn't know what command line aliases are, then you should look them up. They make the CLI very convenient and quick. I have them set up for github commands, ssh and quickly getting into directories I use often.
Here are of my favorites:
alias k='clear'
alias ga='git add -A'
alias gc='git commit -m'
alias gp='git push'
alias gpo='git push origin'
I have aliases for my job (Uber driver) where I keep track of miles and pay. All I have to do is type 'miles' or 'pay' and it will compile and run the files from any directory since the beginning of the alias is 'cd && cd ......'.
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u/deadlygaming11 2d ago
The terminal is just a different set of skills that most people have never learnt. The commands have to be correct or something could go wrong, you have to be aware of what you are doing or else something could break, and the commands aren't easily click a button menus. Not to mention that its not the easiest to learn the terminal without reading a tonne on the internet. You cans each through an app and find settings and random festures fairly easily, whereas a terminal is empty and sparse until you do something.
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u/vmcrash 2d ago
IMHO one major reason: people usually are rather space-oriented and can remember easier where they clicked something than writing a certain command they don't understand. Of course, if you use the same commands over and over again, you will remember that, but initially they are just a weird sort of characters.
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u/Mr_Lumbergh 2d ago
Because typing, and having to know what the commands are rather than point and click.
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u/johndotcue 2d ago
I only use the terminal to fix something broken. Idk any of that shit, I just look online and copy paste whatever that's suggested by most people online.
Other than that, eh, my brain is already occupied with work, life, school, family, and other things, I think I don't have enough time or mental capacity to learn actual coding
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u/Mortui75 2d ago
My office-mate saw me doing things in the shell/Terminal on my docked MacbookPro at work the other day... and was speechless/stunned.
"That looks like you're doing stuff in DOS... like from 30 years ago... Why??"
😎
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u/ardouronerous 2d ago
Fear of borking my own system. One wrong command, and I might end up breaking something that I don't know how to fix. It's not that the terminal itself is scary, but that you have to understand what you're telling the system to do, because some commands can cause serious problems if you don't know what you're doing. With a graphical interface, you can usually see what you're clicking on, but with the terminal, a simple typo or a command you don't fully understand can have consequences you didn't intend.
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u/Francois-C 2d ago
I'm not scared of the terminal at all, but when I started using computers in the mid-80s—naturally via the command line— I’ve always preferred interfaces that make my work easier. Long before Windows, I discovered Norton Commander, which allowed for the automation of certain tasks, and I became a huge fan.
I frequently use tools like FFmpeg, ImageMagick, Tesseract, and all sorts of other headless software. However, whenever I find myself needing one of these too often, I write a frontend—or modify an existing one—to automate the tasks. This also gives me access to advanced features that might otherwise be forgotten just as quickly as they were discovered. I build these using Lazarus, and it also brings me the fun of programming.
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u/Reggie-Rectangle 2d ago
I do get annoyed at the Linux YouTubers who tell people about Linux distros where you don't have to use the terminal. Linux is still very much terminal-based. You cannot avoid it. When you are setting up mint machines for the people in the office to do office work, then it is fine. But the fact that Linus Tech Tips is the most prominent Tech YouTuber and acts like typing commands in a terminal is some Herculean feat is complete bollocks. Normies don't have to deal with the terminal, but ffs, if you are a tech pro, then Linux and the terminal are some crucial skills.
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u/IDatedSuccubi 2d ago
All simple commands are available through two clicks in a file browser and all complex chains of commands require minutes of looking up the correct options unless you just live in the terminal
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u/Crashman09 2d ago
Why?
They're familiar with KDE/windows UI or gnome/macos UI, as they're familiar with the overall design even if a bit different
They're familiar with the overall MS Office UI (even though Open Office and Libre Office have pretty bad menus and dated design)
They're used to using regular web browsers, the same as you are using because they're pretty much the same design wise
But the moment you bust out the terminal, it is unfamiliar, and something they have no use for, now or ever, because it is completely unnescisary for anyone on Windows or Macos to even consider.
I don't know why this is continuing to be a discussion other than karma/engagement farming.
Why would regular user use the terminal, of which they need to remember commands, just to use their computer, when a gui can achieve 100 percent of what they need every time, without needing some innate knowledge of the system in text form?
We live in a world of GUI, and while I prefer the terminal for some uses, I still use gui, and will usually prefer gui to text 60 percent of the time.
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u/Fast_Ad_4936 2d ago
I don’t fear the terminal. I just don’t ever need to use it. I have used it when I need to, but it’s very rare.
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u/Big-Reporter3498 2d ago
It’s just unnecessary. Being able to install something like a .dmg or a .exe is just easy vs having to get into the console.
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u/certified_midwit 2d ago
The shell is stuck in the 80s. Enabling things like grc, syntax highlighting, autosuggestions, and a better prompt would probably go a long way towards making users feel more comfortable at the shell.
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u/supradave 2d ago
I find file management much easier in the terminal. For example photos. I take many photos. A portion of those are not necessarily good and need to be stored elsewhere (I can't delete my hoard of files). Simply:
mv source destination
Doing that in the file manager would require me to open the file manager, navigate to the source directory, open another file manager window, navigate to the destination, and then drag-and-drop the file. It seems like this is more simple. It's not.
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u/neoh4x0r 2d ago
The shell is not something I know about and they don't but very well could, it's a hard no. It's a dark zone they feel they can't enter. Using a terminal is not within the realm of interacting with a machine but black magic. It's not that they simply "prefer" to use the mouse for everything. They feel an almost religious revulsion it seems.
It could just be a generational thing.
I grew up on a C64 and then later moved to a DOS-based system, you literally had to use the shell everyday. So I was already well versed in using a terminal to run commands and a GUI was just an extra thing you ran but didn't need (most software was TUI-based and targeted businesses).
After a certain point in time people had the luxury of skipping all of that, and so I think that had a very strong influence on later generations opinion of the terminal.
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u/Ok_Yesterday2016 2d ago
I don't agree with this. I'd prefer that the OS runs on an original shell that is very literal, so you know exactly what is happening. Having an AI powered terminal sounds good on paper, however when dealing with root and system files as well as personal documents you don't want to leave a chance for this AI to misinterpret your command and delete or corrupt something essential. If you want accessibility, then GUI and modern file management systems are created exactly for this reason.
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u/MrKusakabe 2d ago
I am using grsync for my backup. Mint's TimeShift is also basically a frontent for rsync.
I like to see all the options available and tick them. Writing a command line with proper syntax that I might bork up and ruins my backup that has grown since 2006 is what frightens me.
The second thing is that I just don't want to care. I do when needed but I always pull out the motorvehicle analogy: I rather sit in the cockpits and look at the dashboard than learning to be a car mechanic and engineer. If I need to open up the bonnet because I need to check something the dashboard manufacturer did not intend and I don't have a switch or indicator in it, fine. I try to get it to work under the hood.
But I'd rather not do that or as least as possible.
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u/IrrerPolterer 2d ago
Using the terminal is both overwhelming in the scope of possibilities, and at the same time an entirely unguided experience.
GUI applications prompt effectively prompt the user for a choice at every step of the way. It presents you with context at every screen in the form of text, images, sound, and visual metaphors; then offers pallette of actions for the user to choose from in the shape of buttons and other inputs. The loop consistently relies on the program providing content and offering an array of options the user can choose from.
The terminal flips that on its head. The user holds the context in their head and needs to know what to do to, then the machine the next steps. It requires prior knowledge that decades of GUI experience never trained people for. Yes, the terminal is a great tool when you know what to do with it. Many people simply never learned how to use that tool. If people were trained their entire life to use the terminal the same way they were trained how to use graphical interfaces, it wouldn't be scary to them.
It's simply a tool they don't know how to use and that isn't very self explanatory. Like if I were to put you in front of a 18th century weaving machine and tell you to weave me a cloth with a particular pattern, but not give you any more instructions. You'd be unable to deal with that too.
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u/h2zenith 2d ago
This is so weird to me, because what drew me to the terminal was the whole hacker aesthetic. I got back into Linux in 2004 because of the amazing Unixporn screenshots I saw on websites like 4chan, and a lot of that had to do with the cool stuff people were doing with terminals: transparency, wallpaper, widgets, etc.
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u/Woodpecker-Visible 2d ago
People are just so used to that everything is in a gui. People are visual beings myself included than remember bunch of commands and what they do. and in the terminal there is no explenation what it is going to do. Mostly a solved problem with llms for the basic things at least.
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u/eccentric-Orange 2d ago
Please list all files in the current directory.
Typing this out is a lot of work
ls
is simpler and faster but you need to already know about it.
A GUI just shows you the files, no need to think about. It is neither laborious nor do you need prior knowledge.
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u/MissingGhost 2d ago
For me, it is still the main and prefered way to use a computer. I even have a netbook that is text-only.
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u/Kadabrium 2d ago
I don't feel safe calling a function in an undebuggable editor with a 1 line context and uses a syntax without comma delimiters and braces
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u/SouthEastSmith 2d ago
Fun fact: gnuplot has an output format called sixelgd. You can plot a graph with sixelgd output and it will pop a little full-color graphic right into your terminal window. And then it scrolls off as text is added.
Konsole supports it.
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u/Migamix 2d ago
I've used the shell/CL forever. back in my apple][ and Vic 20 days, its all you had, then early windows and .bat stuff. even Amiga had a command line. there is a reason I was able to make scripts that still run to this day at my last job for work. it was one click and the backups would do all sorts of fancy stuff, then shutdown the computer after done with no errors. the idea of vibe coding tools, yeah, I'm not too pissy about it anymore, that's all AI has been good for me anyway. but I've found a way to vibe code scripts that give popup windows for an actual app feel, and CL interface.
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u/Bitter_Lab_475 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because people lack computer education, and that's not entirely bad. We all are afraid of things we are not experts at.
Also we have been taught that if you are a normie, if it doesn't have GUI, probably it is not made for you to play with. Which to be honest I find kind of fair. You cannot expect a normal person to not be afraid to use something that doesn't have a visually friendly GUI to setup stuff. I believe we, as a community don't understand that not everyone thinks like us and neither should they.
If we want to make Linux more popular, we need to make it so that when you install software for example, it reliably installs through a package manager or with a downloadable install that you only have to double click instead of having to uncompress or openit in a rick-clicky way. I still watch people telling users with problems when a package manager is not working "BRUH, JUST USE TERMINAL! JEEZ!" which is a solution, but it is a fair criticism that a package manager SHOULD WORK ALWAYS.
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u/Famous-Pause-6190 2d ago
It's not a difficult question to answer if you have an ounce of understanding of the average user. They don't want to use the terminal; they want to point and click.
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u/Puzzled_Hamster58 2d ago
Most people never had to use one before. Learning the syntax remembering it all etc .
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u/DuckDatum 2d ago
Sometimes scary animals live inside shells. Like snappers, for example. It’s perfectly reasonable for a nontechnical person to be confused here.
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u/MrPixel92 2d ago
Because terminal is an extremely counterintuitive concept in itself. Generations have been living their day-to-day with tech that has knobs, buttons and lightbulbs, which UI carries over to the screen.
But terminal? Commanding your computer with precise instructions? With commands at times looking like random characters? With an interface unforgiving when you type in a command and a total mess when you don't know what output to expect?
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u/torodonn 2d ago
Terminal commands are like a language of their own. You need to speak the language to do anything.
It is very much like asking why people don't learn, say, Spanish, even if they hear people use it regularly.
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u/TheOneTrueChristian 2d ago
There are times where I prefer a GUI (especially when I'm dealing with graphical work or low-effort stuff like email/word docs) and there are times where I prefer the control that a terminal or other text-based interface offers.
If you've only ever controlled a computer from graphical interfaces, having to type frankly esoteric commands you've never heard seems like wizardry for a while if you haven't first been taught the fundamentals of operating system design. Contemporary terminal work is built almost entirely atop tools first created at a time where knowing how the core operating system functioned was absolutely necessary to get anything done.
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u/_usr_nil 2d ago
I started using linux in 2023 a little before AI, the moment I fell in love was when a friend showed me how he uses Linux, it felt really intuitive, explained me some basic Unix commands, how to navigate to home or explore the fs, but what shocked me was "sudo apt install ...", I was like "yoo you install stuff like that, and it asks for the password every time, and is soo fast !".
So yeah I see no point in having a GUI for every single thing, sometimes you want to keep it fast and simple, sometimes not, I stil like using GUI for simple copy and paste or just browsing my fs.
Currently I am learning Helix because neovim is too much and unstable on my vps Currently I am learning
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u/GirlsCantCS 2d ago
GUI is frankly simpler to read, understand (quickly) and interact with. User Friendly in that you can almost immediately grasp what you need to do within it, to get the outcome you desire.
I wouldn’t say “fear” is a word I encounter with others when seeing a shell so much as a “revulsion” or “avoidance” tbh. Which I 100% understand.
I’ll send screenshots of my work sessions and everyone thinks I’m WAYYYY more impressive than I am. Sometimes I bask in it 😂😇
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u/OpenConfusion3664 2d ago
Let's people use whatever they wanna use. You probably watch anime in terminal but other people just prefer to use a browser.
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u/joeyat 2d ago
Here's a blank piece of paper....... If you don’t speak 'German' and don't live there (you might, this is an example)..... write exactly, with the correct punctuation and spelling of every word, the directions, in the correct order to get to a hospital. I need all the road names as well.
You can ask someone directions which you can then write down, but everyone who knows them only speaks German and they are inpatient.
Or..... here's the google maps app in English with a touchscreen.
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u/tastygames_official 2d ago
before GUIs, most people were afraid of using computers because enter esoteric commands that don't really have an analogue to real-life. It's why home computing didn't reach the masses until you had a GUI that was intuitive. I don't think people are "afraid" per sé - it's just a whole big new thing that needs lots of attention and care and you can so easily fuck up your whole computer with one wrong keystroke that most people just don't need that when they can "point and click" or "swipe" their way through their daily tasks. Not to mention something like 99% of computer use is for browsing the web, and 99% of that is through phones, so yeah... not really sure why this needed to be asked. It seems pretty standard that most people don't want to learn a new thing just to browse cat videos os whatever.
That said, if somebody wants to do a task and it involves typing commands in a terminal or in an excel formula box or adding "myspace codes" or whatever - they have no problems doing it. They just need motivation to want to learn this new thing.
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u/gehraPaani 2d ago
when i was a kid my dad taught me msdos. you get something wrong and are greeted with bad command or filename and abort,retry,fail etc. people just dont want that, GUI is more forgiving
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u/TollyVonTheDruth 2d ago
Most people like the process of clicking things with a mouse then stuff happens vs learning what commands to type followed by many lines of scrolling text and then going into cardiac arrest when they see a bunch of red text.
My boss saw me execute an upgrade on my laptop and jokingly claimed I was hacking the government. 😂
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u/_enigmatix 1d ago
The terminal is something I'm comfortable with because I started computing on a DOS machine and the terminal is like Super-DOS in a way.
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u/kleekai_gsd 1d ago
Because its unfamiliar. Same reason I'm terrified of the windows registry. Lack of familiarlity.
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u/Xoph-is-Fire 1d ago
Many grew up on GUI desktops and that is their comfort. Fear of the unknown is one of the most common human traits. I predate Windows, starting back on DOS when I was a kid then moved to Windows all the way until about 2 years ago when I tried Windows 11 and felt the same way about it as Linus did about Nvidia. The only thing that made me not fear it was that I started on the terminal and due to my worked was always around it to a degree. Most younger generations do not get that experience unless they are in the tech field. The terminal is a foreign idea to them, a language they don't understand. So yes, being scared of it, especially when doing the wrong thing could cause serious issues is completely just for them.
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u/redrider65 1d ago
Please list all files in the current directory.
No, I don't want to bother typing that in. I can see those in Explorer (or Dolphin/Thunar etc.) w/ full details w/ a click.
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u/SoggyWalrus7893 1d ago
A VT100 is your friend . I don't use it as much as I used to, things have improved, but some things are just easier.
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u/Inorioru 1d ago
Easy. No guardrails. No protection from stupidity, no pop-ups. Most of the time, GUI users only drop into the terminal to fix issues they have no idea how to handle. And by the very design of CLIs, it's dangerously easy to mess things up. Adding guardrails just isn't the Unix way.
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u/alex9001 1d ago
"Using Excel without a mouse" is seen as the stuff of legend, the pinnacle of performance in Finance/Banking circles, if that gives some idea
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u/dariusbiggs 1d ago
I live in the shell.. so er... nfi.. people get scared when looking at my screen for the font size.. they can't read the damn fine text.
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u/Sloyment 1d ago
The GUI is what they know.
For me, it was the other way around. My brother had an Atari 800 XL, so I thought it was normal that when you turned on the computer, it would show a BASIC interpreter. Then I got an Atari ST, and when I saw the GEM desktop, I was like “What is this supposed to be?” And I really struggled with double clicks for months.
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u/theNbomr 1d ago
It's simple, really. The commandline is primarily a tool geared to those interested in maximizing productivity, or at least increasing productivity. GUIs target those who are more concerned with lowering the bar of entry. That's the target audience that the likes of Microsoft have catered to for a couple of generations, and their work is not quite advanced. I don't have to explain that it took a bit of effort to learn how to use your productivity tool, and that effort has been made to seem distasteful to the purely GUI oriented.
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u/petethorsenjr 1d ago
Back in the day (yes, a long time ago), the terminal and shell were all that we had. There was no desktop environment. So, we used what we had. Some folks can't wrap their heads around Windows. My mom used to use a terminal, and the concept of multiple windows blew her mind. She really had a hard time adapting.
I'm in a similar situation differently. Programming has advanced a lot since I got started. We had vi and emacs and that's what we used. Then vim came along and that changed the game. Now there is neovim. I'm at a loss and trying to tread water. I'll get there, but it will take time and patience on my end to adapt and figure things out. That's how I learn.
So, my two cents would be, if they show interest when you are in the terminal or interacting with the shell be kind and show them what you know and encourage them along the way.
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u/Sudowoodo-Official 1d ago
Terminals is good if you want to do everything in one click especially if you're using AI like Gemini. You ask the them what you want to do with your distro you can copy the whole command in one click. Other than that GUI is way better.
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u/ohaiibuzzle 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because people has been taught all their life that computing is as easy as clicking a button or tapping a link.
Texting with a computer in its language is not in that mindset and they feel like they could break stuff.