 there is an argument on the internet about whether or not as a linux user you should learn the terminal and there are Very good arguments on both sides of this debate on one side You have the people who say you can use the GUI to do anything and they're right on the other side of the argument You have the terminal people who say yeah, but you can do all the stuff you can do in a GUI oftentimes faster Easier and more efficiently. They're also right. So the argument between these two camps is an argument that is really Not an argument at all because if they were to have a race, they would still come up tied How you use your linux computer really doesn't matter. You can use all GUI applications You can use all terminal applications. You can use a combination of them. It doesn't matter. However Your workflow is best suited for you is how you should use it And I don't think that anybody would really disagree with that now You will have the fanboys on one side of the other telling you that you should do it their way But you should ignore those people and just do it the way you want to do it The question becomes is there an advantage of doing it one way or the other? So should you use the terminal or should you just stick to using a GUI program and The answer to that question is is there an advantage to one way or the other is? Unfortunately complicated and it's for multiple reasons for one if you stick to just GUI applications You're going to get everything done that you want to do. That's just the way it is There's no problem with using a GUI application no matter what some of the to the term terminal urge will tell you and Chances are you'll get all of your work done in a way that doesn't require as much Knowledge as which you would have to have in order to use the terminal now That's not always the case sometimes doing things in the terminal is actually easier and you can it can be proven to be easier But that's not always the case and I'd say most of the time. It's not the case There's a friction to learning and doing things in the terminal The oftentimes just don't exist when you're using a GUI application simply because the vast majority of people have been trained Ever since they started using computers to use GUI applications They haven't been trained to do things inside of a shell or inside of a Bash-scripting language or whatever it is and that friction is always going to exist until they push past it and make the effort to learn about how to do things inside the terminal and not everyone has the interest or Capability of actually doing that learning so to go back to the question Is there a advantage over doing it one way or the other and the answer to that question as I said before is? Complicated because there is it is an advantage to having things be the way you're used to them being done So if you've been trained over the course of your computing career to do things in a GUI That's an advantage because chances are even if you come across something that you don't know how to do you can use your experience in previous programs to kind of navigate your way through the new thing and that's not something you can do in the terminal because Every terminal application is mostly different now There are some common threads like you can use the dash dash help flag in most applications or man in for most applications And that will exist But beyond that flags are going to be different the way you run programs are going to be different There's no set way because there's no buttons, you know if that makes sense So there is an advantage for the GUI folks now the question is is there also an advantage of learning the terminal? And the answer to that question is also yes So as you can see that's the reason why I said it was complicated Because the thing is is that if you use Linux long enough, you're going to come across a situation where you have to use the terminal Now I know what I said before like you can use GUI all the time and Never have to use the terminal and that's the case for 99.9% of the the situations you'll find yourself in that's just I mean it's true There's gonna be that one moment where you're expect experiencing a problem And you have to fix it and the only tutorial on the internet tells you to go into a terminal and do Whatever there's no the there's no GUI. I mean there's chances are there is a GUI way of doing it But there's no documentation on how to do it a GUI way The only way you can find a documentation to do it is in the terminal And if you've dedicated yourself just using GUI's and have never learned anything about the terminal You're going to find yourself in it edit this advantage in that situation situation. There is also an argument to be made That by learning the terminal you learn more about Linux Then you do if you stick to using the GUI Applications all the time and I think that this argument is true simply because if you learn the terminal You're gonna learn more about your file system. You're gonna learn more about where files are placed on your system You're gonna learn more about how even GUI applications save configuration files You're gonna learn so much more Inside of a terminal then you'll ever will in a GUI at least that's the way I feel and as someone who Likes the fact that Linux kind of forces me to learn new things all the time I think that the terminal is good for that reason is that every time I Discover something new in the terminal I feel a sense of reward in that process now Maybe you don't place the same kind of value on that experience as I do but I do think that there is some value in Learning new things Beyond all that there is an argument to be made that the terminal can provide you with more efficient and easy ways of Doing certain tasks moving files around navigating the file structure Renaming files batch renaming files Converting files all this stuff it can be argued that doing it in the terminal is actually more efficient efficient simply because You can use multiple programs with inside the terminal Whereas you'd have to have Several different applications to do all those things in a GUI environment. Also, there is the argument that The terminal will actually use less resources. It doesn't have to draw a lot of stuff on the screen So a lot of times terminal applications are faster Actually faster than GUI applications at doing things. So there are Advantages to using the terminal I think the biggest one still remains that if you learn at least some of the terminal stuff like move navigating the file structure kind of understanding the base system like things like LS and MV and CP and all that stuff if you can learn those basics I think in the long run, you'll have a better time on Linux even if you don't use the terminal all the time knowing those Baseline tools will eventually save your bacon probably someday and one of the Greatest examples of this is the ability to kill programs in the terminal So you can either use things like H top or top or be top or whatever You can do a 2e in order to kill a program or you can use something like P kill or X kill in order to actually kill a program That is frozen That's not an easy thing to do in a graphical Environment where you have to using some kind of graphical tool in order to kill now You could open up a system monitor chances are a graphical system monitor You probably have the same functionality But it's oftentimes easier just to open up terminal and do P kill or X kill and you can go through and kill Whatever program it has been frozen because chances are curl control delete or isn't gonna work for you So at the end of the day, where should you fall on this argument? Where should you be? What what should you do? And the answer to that question is something that I said at the beginning of this video Use whatever you want to use use whatever fits your workflow the best. That's the way Linux works Anyone who tells you you have to do this or you have to do that is Barking up the wrong tree because that's never gonna fly with me. It's just not the way Linux works It's not the way Linux should work. You should use Linux the way you want to use Linux You're not on Windows anymore. You can do things a number of ways and there's no correct way of doing it No matter what anybody else says so a little bit of a rambly video Thanks everybody for watching if you haven't already hit the subscribe button and the like button I really do appreciate it if you have comments about this topic or any other topic You can leave those in the comment section below You can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast You can support me on patreon at patreon comm slash Linux cast before I go I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons today Devon Patrick all Primus Marcus Meglin Jack and Nick and tool Steve a cyber girl in X garret Mitchell archsenter carbon-dated Jeremy Sean Oden Martinie Merrick camp Dutch really J dogs Peter a crucible dark minute six and flat a thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time