Using (only) a Linux terminal for my personal computing in 2024

A month and a bit ago, I wondered if I could cope with a terminal-only computer.

[…]

The only way to really find out was to give it a go.

My goal was to see what it was like to use a terminal-only computer for my personal computing for two weeks, and more if I fancied it.

↫ Neil’s blog

I tried to do this too, once.

Once.

Doing everything from the terminal just isn’t viable for me, mostly because I didn’t grow up with it. Our family’s first computer ran MS-DOS (with a Windows 3.1 installation we never used), and I’m pretty sure the experience of using MS-DOS as my first CLI ruined me for life. My mental model for computing didn’t start forming properly until Windows 95 came out, and as such, computing is inherently graphical for me, and no matter how many amazing CLI and TUI applications are out there – and there are many, many amazing ones – my brain just isn’t compatible with it.

There are a few tasks I prefer doing with the command line, like updating my computers or editing system files using Nano, but for everything else I’m just faster and more comfortable with a graphical user interface. This comes down to not knowing most commands by heart, and often not even knowing the options and flags for the most basic of commands, meaning even very basic operations that people comfortable using the command line do without even thinking, take me ages.

I’m glad any modern Linux distribution – I use Fedora KDE on all my computers – offers both paths for almost anything you could do on your computer, and unless I specifically opt to do so, I literally – literally literally – never have to touch the command line.