this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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With CLI, all you need for most use cases is "command --help" or "tldr command" or the beginning of "man command". Been using curl for ages with just that. This blog post is only if you want something in depth to master it, not a requirement to use it.
A GUI is all about figuring things out and it is often pretty clunky compared to a cli, imo.
See, I need a two hour tutorial to use the GUI because everything's scattered all over the place. If I want to know the options for a CLI tool I just read the man page.
Until the time comes where the GUI just doesn't have the specific option for what you want to do, and then usually you can string commands together into scripts to do it. That's where its power lies. Every command/utility on a Unix/Linux system is meant to be a tiny building block to use to accomplish a more complex task.
You can't possibly program an option for every contingency into a static GUI, but you can hand the user a toolbox of command line utilities and then they can accomplish nearly anything.