The Real Reason Linux Users Love The Command Line
By: Jason Evangelho
Tags: Linux, Cli, Geek, Open Source, Command Line

I’d get visibly upset when stumbling across all these tutorials online that use command line instructions when far easier (in my eyes) graphical approaches exist.

Why on earth were these guys showing us how to make an application executable using the command line? Why not just find it in your file manager, right click it, select “properties,” go to the permissions tab, and check the appropriate box to make it executable?

That seemed more intuitive… to me. Or maybe it was just what felt “correct” after two decades of Windows.

Making a bootable USB stick with the command line? Launching a terminal window to install a driver or encode a video with ffmpeg? ARE YOU INSANE?

That was nearly 3 years ago, and my stance has gradually shifted under the weight of experience. But my early computing days bear a striking resemblance to Oliver '0lzi' Kelly’s:

“I spent 20 years using Windows, and the only time that stands out from when I used the command line was to ping an IP address or google.com to test and diagnose network issues. In Linux I use it all the time, and I don’t even second guess it.”

That’s a quote from his recent Community Voice article right here at Linux For Everyone magazine. At the end of it, he poses a question that’s deceptively difficult to answer: Why do Linux users seem to love the command line so much?

So I pondered Oliver’s question for a while.

The Easy Answer

The easy answer is that it feels empowering to use the terminal. There’s this intoxicating geek-driven power-user fantasy satisfaction to making our computer respond instantly to our commands!

The keyboard, mightier than the mouse. Weaponized to do our bidding. Transforming words into binary, and binary into action.

It makes you feel kinda like this:

Hackerman!?

The other easy answer is that, honestly, it can be much faster.

Is sudo apt install vlc audacity obs-studio telegram-desktop steam a faster way to install those 5 apps than searching for them in a distro’s software center? Absolutely!

But it goes deeper than that. Much deeper.

I’ve come to realize the true appeal of the command line is the consistency.

The uniformity.

The reliability.

There is a certain level of comfort in that.

What 3 years of distro hopping has taught me is this: no matter which Debian or Ubuntu-based distribution I decide to use on any given day, installing software will always be the same combination of words, through the same terminal window that’s guaranteed to be there.

I don’t need to be familiar with the file browser, or know how to navigate that particular desktop environment. I just need two things: a simple terminal window, and my words.

You can apply roughly the same argument to any Arch-based system, btw.

Despite my newfound warm fuzzies for the command line, I’ll always insist on there being a GUI alternative, especially for new desktop Linux users.

But I have to wonder if their journey will eventually unfold the same way mine did. I was led to the door, and after a while I discovered the entire buffet on my own.

I won’t use the command line for everything. Especially not for any video rendering tasks! I’ll simply use it when it makes sense to use it.

Like all things Linux, I love having the freedom to make that choice.