Many people ask: ” what is best to use in Linux, the graphical interface or the command line?
And, as always, the answer lies in the eye of the beholder.
It actually depends on the kind of user. Regular users, that use the computer for browsing the internet or create some document, found their easy way through the graphical interface, and that is perfectly fine. Graphical User Interfaces, or GUI, were created just for that: to make easy the use of a computer by the regular user.
However, if you are a power user that does system administration, you will stay away from the graphical interface and use the Command Line Interface, or CLI, instead. Why? Because the CLI allows you to do things that the GUI cannot. The point is that the GUI makes simple to use a subset of the CLI commands, but they are not all available, and certainly, for those that are available, it will not provide you with all the possible options. If it did, the GUI would become much more complicated to use and it was instead designed for simplicity, not to complicate things.
And if you are a programmer, you start walking a different kind of fine line. In fact, there are programmers that work with user interface, for the most, and for them it is nice to have a graphical interface to work with, possibly with a nice programming environment designed to create simple to modestly complex programs. But if you are one of those programmers that work on very complex systems, where you have to deal with thousand of files at once, then again, you shy away from the graphical interface and move back to the CLI, because that is the tool that allows you to do things that are unthinkable when working with GUI like, for example, find a few files in a multitude of other files, where you are not even sure what you are looking for exactly, or making simultaneous changes to a set of files, rather than editing them one by one.
Needs are different and, to satisfy all of them, Linux provides a number of different approaches to find your way in.
Nowadays, a novice Linux user starts with the GUI, because is simple to use and provides everything that he/she needs. Some of these users, over time, will discover the CLI and will try it. Some will decide that is not for them, and others will like it and stick with it. Some others will learn to use both, depending on what their needs of the moment are. And all of that is OK. That’s why there are so many ways to do the same thing with Linux. Not to confuse people, but to offer them the possibility to find the way they like best to do their things.
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