It is quick. it does not need to load a bunch of things and in certain tasks, I can do multiple things at once.

I also find it easier to navigate and edit files with tab to complete.

Because you can’t (easily) program gui apps to automate tasks, but combining a few terminal programs to get more complex behaviour is really easy

because every additional layer of abstraction disrupts communication with the Machine Spirit even further

I like using the terminal because of 3 main reasons:

1. I like using my keyboard
2. I like doing multiple things in one window
3. Verbosity

I’m pretty quick with typing, but sometimes I can’t see !y mouse at first, so it’s just faster for me to type out what I want to do as long as I know the right arguments for it.

My average workflow at work as me doing frequent saml logins and going between multiple kinds of databases. It’s just easier for me to run the saml cli command and then run the SQL CLI command I need instead of messing with datagrip settings and stuff. Also I recreationally run some servers and it’s just easier to ssh into the server, make the changes I need in something like nano or the redis CLI tools and then log back out. This means I’m just plain more comfortable on the terminal in certain situations like config editing, writing posts for my gemini capsule, etc.

Sometimes when I run a GUI program I’ll get big loud silence and don’t know what to do. In that case I genuinely enjoy using the terminal and running an equivalent command with verbosity settings so I can see what it’s doing or not and can track down any errors.

On top of those reasons, I’ve been playing with RISC-V architecture lately and, while the xorg riscv64 port is admirable, I just get better performance rn by running my RISC stuff through tty.

I recognize that not everybody is going to have the same use case and workflows as me, but I’m pretty comfortable with what I’ve got 😅

Because it’s the only way for me to change the color of my rgb keyboard /jk but it’s true tho

Terminal is faster when you’re used to it and sometimes offer more customization options to some apps that has both a GUI and TUI/CLI version.

I use the terminal (st with zsh and tmux) for:

• file management (advcpmv, fd, trash-cli, fzf …)
• emails (neomutt)
• text editing/coding (neovim)
• project management (taskjuggler)
• image viewing/organization (ucolla,ge)
• online video browsing (ytfzf)
• calendar (khal)
• ssh
• vpn
• news aggregator (newsboat)
• web, bookmarks manager (buku)
• passwords manager (pass)
• dotfiles manager (stow)
• not in the terminal but I also have a lot of scripts used in rofi to control my audio input/outputs, launch a web search, access my bookmarks, autocomplete username and password fields

I’m sure I’m missing some obvious tools I use daily. It’s hard remember everything when it becomes so natural.

I have shared my experience with some of these tools here.

For simple tasks you don’t need CLI. Most GUIs implement basic workflows and do a reasonable job at it (obviously not counting the ridiculous amount of time Windows needs to “compute space requirements” while deleting an empty directory. Seems it’s more important to get that little popup on screen and run the animation a few times than actually doing the job).

It’s when you get past the basics that CLI comes into its own. Those grindy things you do in Windows clicking one thing at a time? Glue a couple of commands together in the CLI and it’s done in a tiny fraction of the time.

Cause it is faster than GUI…

Repeatibility (is that a word?) and scriptability. I find CLI tools easier to work with and easier to get information from them.

Because every IDE implementa a different git interface and I can’t be bothered to figure out where they hid the commit, push, pull etc. buttons this time.

I can use Fish’s history to jog my brain on actions I don’t quite remember. Remembering a sequence of screen menus to click thru is often much more tedious & error-prone. And when you have a commonly repeated process, it’s trivial to script because shell scripts are, well, scripts for that terminal shell.

Also the terminals applications are hella portable. I can use ssh/mosh over the network & have a similar or exact environment as my main PC on a remote box. vi was always a good enough editor.

Because Gui’s don’t show advanced options and so I know/understand exactly what is being done. (e.g. I would always use apt over mint’s package store so I could see what it did, how much time I had left, download multiple applications at once and see if the package made a random config file somewhere)

Reproducable actions that do exactly what you expect.

1. It feels great
2. Terminal programs run on a potato
3. They are almost always way more powerful then their GUI counterparts
4. They integrate with scripts and other tools for unlimited power and flexibility!
5. You feel like a hacker man
6. Your IT literate friends think you are cool
7. You can really do things your own way

So yeah I love using the terminal for almost everything

I’m just faster in the terminal than a gui