🥇How to make the terminal your ally, not your enemy?

In this article, we'll discuss why it's important not to completely abandon the terminal, but to use it in moderation. When should you use it, and when should you refrain from doing so?

Let's be honest

None of us really needs the terminal. We are accustomed to clicking on everything we can and triggering something. We’re too lazy to open something and type commands. We want functionality here and now. Most of us don't even use the terminal at all. Is it worth using at all?

Why should you use the terminal?

It's convenient. You don’t have to switch between multiple windows or search for something with the mouse. You can simply write the necessary command.
Let’s outline situations when the terminal is needed:

When you need to enable something and there’s no time to search for it in the settings (Hello, GUI dconf)
When it's simpler to find a file or folder in the terminal rather than wasting time on the GUI (fzf does a great job with this task)
When it’s easier to quickly edit a file in Vim, Neovim, Nano, or Micro rather than delving into an IDE
When there's only the terminal (like resetting settings in Ubuntu or installing Arch Linux, for example)
When you need speed, not quality

Once do not need to use the terminal:

When this functionality isn't available in the terminal (this happens very rarely, but it does happen)
When it's more convenient to do it in the GUI rather than struggle with TUI (like debugging programs, for instance)
When you don’t really know how to do anything in the terminal, but you need to do something quickly (you might spend more time automating than actually doing the task, I think this is familiar to everyone)
When convenience, not speed, is required

These are the key rules that should not be forgotten. It seems simple, but the desire to 'let’s try to automate everything instead of clicking the mouse twice' often takes precedence. People are lazy, but it doesn’t always work in their favor.

Making the terminal viable

Here’s my minimal set to do something reasonably well in the terminal:

Tmux — to split the window into panes (if you spawn a bunch of terminal windows and switch between them for a long time, the whole idea loses its meaning; it’s easier to just switch between applications with the GUI)

fzf — to quickly find something. It’s indeed faster than using the GUI. vim and select the file name, and that’s it.

zsh — (specifically OhMyZsh) the terminal should be user-friendly and not jarring to the eyes.

neovim — as the purpose of being in the terminal is almost lost without it. An editor that can do much more than GUI applications.

And also a huge number of other applications: ranger (or ViFM), how2, live-server, nmcli, xrandr, python3, jshell, diff, git, and more.

And what’s the point?

Just think about it; when you try to load a full-fledged IDE just to change a small script — it’s irrational. It’s much easier to quickly edit it in Vim (or Nano, for those who don’t like the Vim layout). You can do things faster, but you don’t need to learn everything in the terminal. Perhaps, while working in the terminal, you will never need to learn the Bash scripting language because you don’t need it.

Let’s make things simpler and view different things from various perspectives rather than dividing everything into black and white.

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