this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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Perception: "the CLI is scary and hard to use" Reality: "computer, install gimp" "yessir, that'll be 141MB, is that okay?"
That didn't work. I got
You gotta do it like this:
Unless you use Fedora, because I have decided that dnf stands for "do not fucking" so you tell your computer do not fucking install Firefox and then it does it anyway because it has Authority issues
That is an oversimplification and you know it. Why is it so hard for CLI people to be honest?
Installing software on the command line is often a nightmare, requiring multiple commands and throwing error messages that you can only find mention of in one unresolved thread on some obscure forum somewhere.
Plus, there are so many different commands that you have other CLI users saying that they need to pull up reference tools to remember how to do different actions. I have only ever needed to that once or twice ever for GUIs.
Get real.
Interesting if unseemly glimpse into your psyche.
And into yours. Do you think the "reality" they're presenting is honest?
Even if they're not lying, they're definitely not telling the truth.
... and you believe that it's because they are a "CLI person" that they are unable to be honest. Because that's a thing that a sane person would say.
Winget install [programname]winget search [programname]winget upgrade --all --silentOh look, its also super easy in Windowsland!
or
Doesn't get more complicated than that.
And for updates
Much faster than opening a GUI, and it didn't take long for me to remember the commands.
Uhhh, maybe if we are talking about back in like 2001?
I literally manage a fleet of linux end user machines and i can't remember the last time installing software was more than just "pacman -Syu (yes they run arch BTW)
Why are anti cli people so dishonest about how hard it is? Now, if you are trying to get involved in like machine learning or something then yes that's an absolute nightmare of errors and installing python packages and other nonsense but that's true no matter what platform you're on and whether you have a GUI or not. Even all the fancy gui installers for stuff like stable diffusion are a constant nightmares of I'm not working because fuck you that's not unique to cli
I'm talking about installing ordinary programs via the CLI in the 2020s. I have had loads of complicated installs for software (no LLMs) just for personal use in the last 5 years. I've heard the same story from other people who've switched to Linux.
I think what's happening is that people who insist that the CLI is easy just don't tend to run into the problems I'm talking about, whereas for CLI haters it's the norm.
I genuinely do not understand how you could run into issues with a basic program unless you're attempting to install from source code or something. Any basiclinic system should have a package manager and you literally just say install this and it just goes.
The only time that I would have the chance to hit the kind of problems you described or ever seen anyone hit those problems is when installing directly from a repository on GitHub, straight from Source code, or attempting to use a downloaded dpkg or random wget line from reddit instead of just using the package manager
You just need to know the name of the package you need to install.
On Garuda, you can enter the command in a terminal, and if isn't installed, it will search and give you a list of packages to install from.
In my experience, installers are often a nightmare.
For me, GUI vs CLI have about the same failure rate (for their operating system).
But I appreciate that the CLI version gives me a message I can search for instead of a "fuck you buddy" pop up box with an "ok" button.
Edit: There's one case where I have a much harder time with CLI installs - when there's only a CLI "installer" available. I don't blame the CLI for that, I blame the person who shares seven CLI commands instead of writing an installer.
Something went wrong :(
Nah I don't know it, cause that's not been my experience. But admittedly my experience is also pretty limited so maybe I've just yet to run into this myself. I'm just a general use case desktop PC user not doing anything particularly technical.
That's fair enough, and sorry for jumping to accusing you of dishonesty. To be honest I'm totally shocked that you and so many others in this thread have had such an easy time installing software through the CLI. I have had loads of trouble for the same user case as you, to the extent that I've had to completely give up on installing a variety of programs that didn't have GUI installers available.
Our experiences are totally opposite, so it makes sense that we have opposite stances on the CLI.
How were you installing from the command line? Like, what commands were you using?