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.
I love 'em in theory!
In practice, they're kind of scary, I have no idea how to find out how to use it, and of the things I do have some idea how to do, I can do faster with a graphical tool I'm more familiar with.
It's definitely intimidating at first but cheat sheets (or straight up googling) can help with a lot of stuff. But in modern Linux, you also don't really need the terminal for a lot of things; mainly just installing software or updating. So you don't need to know a lot about it.
Even installing software or updating won't need the terminal in a lot of distros nowadays, or at least won't need the user to type any commands.
I still feel like it's nicer to be able to install from the command line rather than searching out and downloading the binaries.
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.
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.
I have run into situations where the only real solution to a problem is a command line utility, and quite honestly, when they are well documented with precise information and examples of correct usage, I actually rather like them - they tell you exactly what they're doing and don't waste resources drawing a window and progress indicators. The problem is poor documentation and thus poor discoverability. A tool to do a thing isn't efficient if I can't figure out how to make it do the thing.
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.confwhich 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.
I understand what you're saying, and I much prefer when people offering help provide terminal commands like this over when they provide vague directions (like "just add "fluffy_cat_mode_on" to the end of your config file for the program, that'll fix your issue", which I could eventually figure out, but telling me where the file is and supplying a command to do it automatically rather than finding the file in my file browser and opening it in a text editor is really handy) or attempt to provide directions that work with the specific graphical tools they're using, which might not be the same ones I've got.
Good lord do I ever hate trying to fix a Windows issue and being given graphical instructions that lead to menus and buttons that don't exist on the system I'm trying to fix. Just give me the bloody terminal command so I can see if it's a UI glitch/update or a deeper bug. I still won't know how to fix it if the terminal spits an error at me, but then I can look up the underlying error instead of sifting through pages of dead ends with pics of the nonexistent option I'm supposed to click just looking up "xxx button/menu missing". I do not like the CLI, on any operating system, but being told in Linux forums and software documentation to use specific terminal commands to fix things is significantly less frustrating than what appears to be SOP for Winblows troubleshooting. Which I suppose is the result of everyone using the same DE and core graphical tools.