Re: Anyone still use only use the Terminal?

On 2025-04-18, Farley Flud <fsquared@fsquared.linux> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:08:03 +0000, Borax Man wrote:
>

Subject says it all.
 
I'm curious whether there are people who do all their computing, or part
of it, without a GUI at all.  That is, just plain Text Mode.
 

>
What, exactly do you mean by "the terminal?"  I will assume that you
mean the command-line interface, or CLI.
>
I use virtual terminals (VT) all the time.  I usually have 4-5 of them
open across several virtual desktops (VD).
>

I meant to use a Text Mode interface, ie, no GUI at all.  What you get
when you press CTRL-ALT-F1. I assume that people are using terminals
quite often within the GUI, my interest was more wheher people just
forgo the GUI completely from time to time.

My favorite TUI, or text user interface, is Midnight Commander (MC),
which offers a plethora of indispensible capabilities.
>
Thus, for me, it is VTs on VDs with MC that accomplishes most of my
work.
>

After 20+ years I only found out yesterday that Midnight Commander has
themes.  Still my file manager of choice when no GUI is available.

Of course, I build all of my software from source so there is much BASH/Perl
scripting involved and these only run on VTs.  Then there are many Bash/Perl
scripts that perform important processing tasks of various sorts like
document scanning and image/sound manipulation.
>
For me the GUI is just a convenient device that contains VTs on
VDs with MC.
>
There are also times when a genuine GUI program is called for, such
as Mathematica, Matlab, wxMaxima, GIMP, Geomview, MathMod, Geany, Cooledit,
Pan, Sylpheed, etc., but all maintenance, configuration, building, testing,
important other stuff, etc. is done with VTs on VDs with MC.
>

I find the more I've used Linux over the years, the more I've adapted my
workflow to a "terminal/command line" first approach.  That is, I'll
solve the problem using the terminal, and maybe at a GUI shim in top of
that.  I used GROFF to create financial reports for an organisation I
was treasurer for, "pass" to manage passwords, which is primarily
command line but with GUI front ends, other scripts here and there,
which I can tie in with a GUI front end.  This makes the system more
cohesive, because I can use the GUI for example, to retrieve a password,
but know when I've not got a GUI available, the underlying process is
still there.