Is it possible to use Linux without the command line?

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.

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.

Absolutely and has been the case for years...

Have no fear, the Penguin is friendly

Yes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 have never seen a good enough answer for it, so I will take a shot today.

Is it possible to use Windows without Registry .reg hacks?

Is it possible to use Windows without pirated software?

Is it possible to use Windows without a solid antimalware solution?

The level of difficulty with Linux and Windows is similar. We find Windows easier only because:

• educational institutions indoctrinate us with using it since we are kids
• games and their cracks work seamlessly on Windows, the most important form of entertainment for people upto 25-30 years age
• Windows upto 7 actually did far too much to make the UX great, something at which neither MacOS nor Linux distros succeeded at. The first Linux distro to make strides was Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with GNOME2, where I started my journey.

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?

Its not possible to use windows to its fullest without the command line. You can muddle along and miss out without it but you will always hit a point where the cli is the best way forward.

Firefox and forks have Wayland support (MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1) by default since version 121 or so.

Yes, entirely possible. I've been using Linux off and on since 2006 and full time as my daily driver since 2018ish. I've used Ubuntu, Fedora, Open Suse, Endeavour OS, Manjaro and various combos of those in that time. I barely use CLI, bar distro updates and a few basics. The fact that you need to use the CLI is a complete myth. I see a lot of responses stating "yeah, but why would you want to?" . That, frankly, is gatekeeping. I fully respect those who choose to use the CLI as a powerful tool, I understand their position. But if someone chooses not to, because they aren't as used to it or just prefer to use a mouse to click around then yes it is possible, and they should be encouraged to run a Linux distro if they want to.

If I had read many of the responses below, back in 2006, I may not have tried Ubuntu when I did and may not be still using Linux to this day.

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.

Yeah my daily driver for awhile has been Debian stable. All the normal day to day tasks can very easily be accomplished with only gui tools. My CLI stuff is more or less limited to ssh access to other machines and some light docker tinkering.

It reaaaally depends. Say the person only needs a browser, once they or someone installs the OS, they can just go to firefox and get started doing whatever they do. If they want to play some games then they might need to learn how to get steam, wine, lutris and stuff installed. However, some distros like Bazzite has that installed. I guess it all depends what they want to do with the computer and how much they want to play around with it.

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.

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

with certain distros the answer is a resounding "yes" with some others it's a "technically, yes" and with even others it's "good luck!"

UAC-style sudo prompts are are one of the most common issues i can think of. It's very poorly implemented in the distro i use.

I wish I could just go 10 minutes without using terminal.

I always think Linux caters to people with incredibly basic requirements such as a bit of web browsing, emails, and editing a document. And it obviously caters to total nerds like the kind of people who subscribe to the Linux section of Lemmy.

However, it really doesn’t cater well to the inbetweeners who want stuff a bit more advanced than what an iPad can do, it kind of just lumps them with a huge learning curve and says “get on with it”.

Debian's great but not the best choice here.

There are tons of things a distro needs to preconfigure for you to work like that.

It can absolutely work. Imagine:

• atomic distro based on uBlue using KDE Plasma
• a working ISO (lol)
• it updates automatically when battery is okay and the network is not metered
• the image uses :latest versions so version upgrades are automatic
• flathub is preinstalled
• install apps
• manage flatpak permissions through KDE Settings
• maybe use btrfs-assistant for some fancy backup and management stuff (but that is not preinstalled)

But for some stuff CLI is needed.

That is very true. Good point.

my first computer only had a command line

You can definitely hammer a screw, but why would you?

Yes. Pretty much on all distros. Also its a very different feeling than when you do it on Windows. On linux its to do a specif desired task and it doesnt have that strange feeling of just running an obscure that you dont understand command like on Windows.

Keep it to Fedora, Opensuse, Ubuntu/Debian or Endevour. The first two are the bests.

People try their hardest to make computers your friends. Don't be afraid to talk to them 😊

The only way I know of to fix the bios time issue when dual booting with windows is using the cmdline on Linux, or regedit on windows.

Meanwhile, in Plasma:

You can't run the linux I use (nixos) without the command line.

The mobile linuxes are way more GUI oriented. Android is first on that list. But also the various other linuxes that target phones, with UIs like phosh. On those I'd say you can mostly never touch a terminal.

But I don't think you'll ever be able to do ALL the things without touching the command line though. There's a lot of software that's intended to run in a no-GUI situation, like a headless server or embedded. Sometimes a GUI interface will be provided, but I doubt that kind of thing will ever be GUI-first.

I don’t think you really do anymore. I’d consider myself an experienced Linux user. I’ve been using it as a my desktop OS for over 20 years. I’ve also used Linux heavily through my career and am completely comfortable with the command line.

With recent installs of Fedora the only thing I use the command line for is the initial setup of the multimedia codecs. After that I haven’t been required to touch it.

I used to consider a terminal required to keep your desktop Linux system running. Now I look at is as an optional install for programmers.

Nowadays, pretty much yes. I more or less use the command line as much as I did on windows. Of course things like installing software via the repos is more efficient via the command line, but most GUI tools will work perfectly fine for most people.

as much as you can use windows without touching the command line, so long as you don't fuck about with stuff or want to do anything particularly fancy you have no reason to touch the terminal, but if you break stuff then just like with windows you'll want to use the terminal to fix things because otherwise you'll be spending 5 hours clicking your fingers off in a graphical problem solver.

This is only correct if the GUI works. Never had a Debian install where not at least one KDE setting was broken and needed to be fixed from GUI.

Also if you want to run things like team speak you can hardly escape the command line

edit a system text file, which goes against the spirit

what?

In KDE (well, in dolphin) you can edit files in system folders from GUI if you type admin://path/to/folder. You might need to install one kio-admin before tho, and you need dbus and polkit

Permanently Deleted

Is it possible to use Linux without the command line? ...Nvidia...

Yeah, with Nvidia you're going to have a bad time never using CLI since their driver can ball kick you to TTY when GDM or SSDM takes a shit from Nvidia linker fuckups.

I’m not reading all that. The answer is no.

No

Is it possible to use Linux without the command line? Yes. Should you do it? Definitely not.

No, nor should the user be encouraged to. Shell is often the best tool for the job for things like filesystem operations and scripting for a unix environment. Limiting yourself as a user just to copy Windows' and MacOS' paradigm is just hurting yourself in the long run.

Why would you? The command line is the natural way of interacting with a computer. GUIs are just for convenience. What you’re asking is like „can there be a city where the public transport is so good that I never have to walk“.

And that’s a fact for every operating system, not only Linux.

No.

You literally just doubled down on being one. Computers are here to serve people, NOT the other way around.

I'm done here.