this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
630 points (96.5% liked)
Funny
11972 readers
1417 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Like at all? You don't ever need a command to install/update drivers, repos, packages, software in general, change settings deep in the OS, fix hardware issues, read logs, create accounts, ...
Because all those things you can do with a GUI in Windows. Even the registry is just a folder structure.
I use cli to update my Bazzite, but I think there is a UI for it somewhere...
So the advantage of GUIs over CLIs is discoverability, right? But the processes for reading logs or fixing hardware issues in Windows are not really discoverable, you still have to search the net and learn, so what's the difference? That the keyboard is scary?
I think most of these complaints are just borne of unfamiliarity.
But to answer your question, as a Bazzite user: definitely "I don't know". I've been using linux for years, it's natural to me to just open the terminal for many things, therefore I'm not sure whether there are roadblocks to a 100% mouse usage, but to be honest, if all you do is use the browser, office suite and games, I'd say that yes, your need to resort to the terminal is almost zero.
Don't forget accessibility. Proper GUIs are accessible, they convey function and meaning through form. People constantly forget that.
Can you clarify?
Imagine a graph vs just the raw data. Which one is easier to pull the information from and comprehend? Our brains are purpose built to rapidly digest and comprehend a constant influx of visual data and ways to convert raw output into easy to comprehend visualizations dramatically increase a general user's ability to interface with a system and the data that it generates. The dashboard of your car is a GUI, for example.
Also, there's the humble button. A single graphic combined with a single mouse button that can be used to perform a near infinite number of actions. It's a translation layer that allows you to perform actions preset by the company who designed the thing so that a user doesn't have to already be familiar with how it runs in order to accomplish everyday tasks. I could type "@self -cast 'light attack' -target 'Malenia, Blade of Miquella'" over and over again, but why would I when I can just spam click the right shoulder button on my controller until I die a very quick death?
The issue that Linux users run into (and why Linux has never reached any real traction in the global computer user base) is that they're usually power users who already use a terminal or are well versed in similar systems. They don't necessarily need a way to translate data to or from the terminal because they've been using it long enough that it feels simple, like a physicist wondering why cars measure the fuel tank with a dial gauge rather than a number showing the newtons of potential energy left in the gas tank. It's a meaningless number to the average person, who just wants to know whether or not they have gas in the tank and maybe the distance that will let them travel before the tank runs out. You could calculate the latter using the potential energy in the tank, but the average person isn't going to know that formula and be able to bust it out at any given time, so there's a GUI in the car that does it for you.
TLDR Yes
You are asking for things most people don’t know how to handle on windows let alone Linux
All with a GUI
The only family of distros I knew that could do all those things was OpenSuse thanks to YaST. Unfortunately they just sunset that tool without installing the new alternative "Cockpit" by default now, sooo… yeah. A lot of the things you mentioned can be done via GUI like account management, software and such, but by far not everything. The only distro which got most of those covered I can think of would be Linux Mint, there the CLI can be treated as more of a fallback solution or for those who want to use it.
Honestly this is a great argument and a huge gripe I have with people installing Linux Mint on other peoples computers, to upgrade LM you need to know how to follow terminal instructions. Although they advise to completely reinstall lm on your pc every time Ubuntu ends support (5years).