I paid for a keyboard, I'm going to use a keyboard!

Yes, but no...

For a basic user, who does not expect to be doing anything special beyond opening existing programs, or using programs downloaded from the package-manager its possible to never touch terminal.

I have two kids who daily drive Manjaro based light gaming PC's, they never touch the terminal, but they also dont administer their systems, I do.

I do use the terminal, frequently for updates, and some specialized tasks like minecraft mods which require unpacking files and sometimes fixing permissions.

So my TLDR, is that its possible to be a USER without touching the terminal, but I dont think its possible to be an administrator without.

Yes.

Anyone who says differently is confusing "necessity" with "efficiency".

When I first started in Linux I rarely used the command line at all. But as time went on and I became more familiar, I found that there were some things that were simply faster to do in the command line.

I can't think of a single "everyday regular user task" than needs the command line, tbh.

I think it’s perfectly possible to use Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora without the terminal. But a lot of online tutorials are like, “Just run this command.” because it’s faster.

I’m an experienced terminal user but I know with my Steam Deck, I barely ever use it. Really the only time is when I want to update packages quicker than using the GUI tool. But you could successfully use a Steam Deck without ever launching into Desktop mode, much less opening a terminal.

Debian is great for servers, not for desktop novices. Use a state of the art desktop OS like fedora (atomic) and you won't face a lot of those issues.

Yes, linux "has a problem" with nvidia but we should blame nvidia, not linux.

Well, the good news is that of course you can use Linux with only as much command line interaction as you get in Windows.

The bad news is that the command line REALLY isn't what's keeping people away from Linux.

Hell, in that whole list, the most discouraging thing for a new user isn't the actually fairly simple and straightforward terminal commands, it's this:

Here's where it gets a little trickier: Scrolling on Firefox is rough, cause the preinstalled old version doesn't have Wayland support enabled. So you either have to enable Wayland support or install the Flatpak version of Firefox.

This is a completely inscrutable sentence. It is a ridiculous notion, it brings up so many questions and answers none. It relates to concepts that have no direct equivalent in other platforms and even a new user that successfully follows this post and gets everything working would come out the other end without understanding why they had to do what they did or what the alternative was.

I've been saying it for literal decades.

It's not the terminal, it's not the UX not looking like Windows.

Stupidest motherfuckers I have seen in my life could operate computers back when the only "command line" was an actual programming language in the 1980s and also during the MS-DOS boom

This CLI fear is something completely unfounded

Everyone who has an Android phone "uses Linux without the command line." Your question, however, seems to be "is it possible to play Windows games on Debian without the command line" (edit: or, more broadly, "how suitable is Debian as a Windows replacement") which is not the same question.

"GUI makes easy tasks easier, CLI makes hard tasks possible". I'm a Debian user and lately I haven't been touching terminal at all, unless it's an inherently terminal task like programing. My only complaint now is that when I did an grub update my config file got reverted to the defaults. All of a sudden I couldn't boot to Windows from grub because os-prober got dissabled (I'm dualbooting). Fixing that is not hard, as you only have to uncomment one line in the config, but it's annoying that it happend.

I use Mint and have yet to use the command line. I browse the web and play games on steam. All of this works right out of the box.

Interresting list, thanks.

Regarding the Firefox Wayland variable, it should be possible to add the line in ~/.profile instand. And that file can simple be opend by showing hidden files in the file manager of choice.

Absolutely and has been the case for years...

Have no fear, the Penguin is friendly

Yes. I've been using Linux for over 10 years without touching the command line. I used Ubuntu up to Unity, then switched to Kubuntu and Plasma. I'm not in IT, so I don't need IT stuff. It all works by GUI. People who haven't tried it might say it's not possible. But they are not speaking from experience. Some others, not interested usability, don't understand why GUIs are so successful and dominant. Which is absolutely fine, as long as they don't try think they are suddenly knowledgeable in usability, and have tried 10+ years of GUI only.

Yes.

why are people so terrified of the terminal?

If you're not going to be tinkering, and all you want is your computer to work, absolutely.

Kind of, but why? I understand why the CLI is intimidating to a newbie but it's not some arcane magic for leet haxxorz, but a poweful tool that everyone can learn to use. We Linux users weren't born knowing how to use it just like a Windows user wasn't born knowing how to use Control Panel. It's a different way of working with a computer, but with patience and learning it will become a useful asset, I can't imagine using a computer without it now.

Yes, absolutely. But I also wouldn't want to. GUI tools have their issues sometimes. The command line is basically raw compute power.

Is it possible to do work in a shed without using a drill?

It is good of you to do this work and post your findings, so no offense intended, but this command line meme is better off not being spread. The terminal is a tool and should be used when it's needed. Time spent worrying about this is time that could be spent making it easier to understand.

I was introduced to the terminal by a friend so I don't know of a good starting tutorial for newbies. I wasn't interested until I saw you could use the output of one command as the input of another command using a "pipe", the | character on the keyboard.

It’s just generally faster to use the terminal if you know what you’re doing.

It's also true for other distros. Not because they have poor GUI tools but because CLI is faster than GUI if you know what you are doing.

Many times you need to use the terminal with Win and Mac too. Sometimes something goes wrong, or you need to enable something that doesn't have a UI. So in the last few years, I've used the terminal with these OSes too. So I don't see why you wouldn't use the terminal with Linux too.

The only time you wouldn't use the terminal at all, is if someone else is your sysadmin, and you're just driving a browser or a couple of apps, as a plain user. Then sure, you'll never need to touch the terminal. My mom only uses a browser for example on her linux laptop. It's good enough for her. But when there's an update or anything else such, I'm the one dealing with it.

I'm not a fan of this approach. I think the idea that users should never touch a command line is an inherently proprietary philosophy. Without the command line, at any given moment, the user is fundamentally limited to whatever options the developer elected to offer.

I think a good GUI will assist a user in learning text configuration and command line functions.

People claiming Linux isn’t a viable alternative cause you can’t run it without using the command line.

Even in 2024, many people begin using GNU/Linux with Arch Linux or Ubuntu with apt-get, then later they complain that Linux is not for average users. Maybe the community needs more GUI only tutorials.

i still don't understand why people are scared of command line when a lot of the fixes for windows bullshit require it in addition to registry editing, and also sometimes gpedit which is enterprise only now iirc.

My wife uses Linux and barely touches the CLI. And when she does, she is only running 1 or 2 specific commands I found for her, that are tied to her needs. But, her main computing device is her phone, so the laptop only gets use a couple of times a month.

Does Android count?

Thanks for the list. It'd be interesting to see something like the Are We X Yet sites for Mozilla/Rust projects that tracks this sort of thing

OpenSUSE has YAST2-GUI GTK. Full GUI for everything, users, hardware review, even fiddling with kernel, services, or editting text config files via admin gui.

I feel like Mint is the move if you never want to utilize the terminal. But while it can be intimidating initially, after using it, you'll grow to love it. Truly makes life way easier. I learned by first finding threads on my issues to copy and paste commands. After doing that enough you'll gain an understanding of the main commands pretty quick. Fedora is a great starter in my mind, as you can do everything through the GUI when first starting, but unlike Mint, you can still get nerdy with the terminal when you feel up to it. Using a VM is a solid option to learn the terminal without any risk, worst case just delete the VM and make another. But you'd have to mess up pretty thoroughly to need to do that in my experience. Fedora, or Nobara which is a gaming and media centric fork of Fedora, are amazing due to the ability to run great out of the box plus being able to dial in anything you want to alter for your needs down the road. Fedora's Software center allows you to add flatpak and snap packages, so it'll all be in one place. Fedora 40 makes NVIDIA drivers pretty easy to deal with too. But this is just my two cents, I'm curious to see what others recommend for you.