How to make the terminal your helper, not your enemy?

In this article, we will talk about why it is important not to renounce the terminal completely, but to use it in moderation. When should it be used and when should it not?

Be honest

None of us really need a terminal. We are used to the fact that we can click on everything that is possible with the mouse and trigger something. We are too lazy to open something and write commands somewhere. We want functionality here and now. Most of us don't use the terminal at all. Should it be used at all?

Why use a terminal?

It's comfortable. No need to switch to many windows, look for something somewhere with the mouse. You can just write the command you need for this.
We list the situations when the terminal need:

• When you need to enable something, but there is no time to look for it in the settings (Hello GUI dconf)
• When it's easier to find a file or folder in the terminal than to spend time on the GUI (fzf does a good job of this)
• When it's easier to quickly edit a file in Vim, Neovim, Nano, Micro than to go into the IDE
• When does it stay only terminal (factory reset in Ubuntu or installation of Arch Linux for example)
• When you need speed, not quality

When need not use terminal:

• When this functionality is not in the terminal (this is extremely rare, but still)
• When is it more convenient to do this in the GUI than to suffer with TUI (debugging programs, for example)
• When you really don’t know how to do anything in the terminal, but you need to do something quickly (you will spend more time on automation than on the action itself, I think this is familiar to everyone)
• When you need convenience, not speed

These are the basic rules that must not be forgotten. It would seem simple, but the desire “let's try to automate everything, and not double-click the mouse” often comes out as a priority. People are lazy, but this is not always in their favor.

Making the terminal itself viable

Here is my minimum set in order to do at least something normally in the terminal:

tmux - to divide the window into panels (if you spawn a bunch of terminal windows and switch between them for a long time, then the whole idea makes no sense, it's easier to just switch between applications with a GUI)

fzf - to quickly find something. It's really faster than on the GUI. vim and select the file name and that's it.

zsh - (more precisely, OhMyZsh) the terminal should be convenient, and not be flashy

Neo's - because the meaning of being in the terminal without it is practically lost. 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

What's the point?

Judge for yourself, when you try to download a full-fledged IDE in order to change some small script - this is irrational. It's easier to just quickly change it in Vim (or Nano, for those who don't like the Vim layout). You can do things faster, but you don't have to learn everything in the terminal. You may never need to learn the Bash scripting language while working in the terminal, because you don't need it.

Let's keep things simple, and look at different things from different angles, rather than dividing everything into black and white

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Sign in, you are welcome.

Do you use the terminal often?

• 86,7%Yes208
• 8,8%No21
• 4,6%Not sure11

240 users voted. 23 users abstained.

Source: habr.com