Linux

Yes.

Yes it is possible. I never need the terminal. If you are interested, you can usually find a GUI way if you look for one. Some people just don't look, then tell people there is no GUI for it. Not very helpful for newbies.

For those not into usability, different people work in different ways. Visual workers are not the same as text workers. So for some, CLI has poor usability and productivity. For lots of things I do, there isn't a CLI anyway.

I use Kubuntu these days. It could be better.

I almost asked this exact question today. I installed Ubuntu (Studio) for the first time and almost immediately needed to do some CLI shit because there's no GUI option to enable jumbo frames. I don't want to learn CLI. I just want to escape Windows.

All modern OS's require the terminal at some point.

To your bonus question: portage

Impossible

"User-friendly" and "updated" sadly sounds incompatible. In just slightly less than one year of using Fedora I've had 3 bad qt updates that broke kde's softwares like kmail, 2 bad amd-gpu updates that made the gpu crash and 1 pipewire update that broke surround sound.

Those were all minor updates that were easy to revert though, just had to use the terminal for that and wait the next fixed version.

If you are just doing word processing, browsing the web, and playing video games then absolutely. Yes.

There have been gui tools available to install packages, configure networking/wifi, and manipulate files. For a long time now. Especially with the integration of Flatpak and snaps into gui-based package managers (like pop shop) it has become quite simple for any "regular", non-technical user to manage the basics and even the intermediates of any system (depending on the distro).

Where things will likely fall short is with troubleshooting. But to solve that we would need to build something like the windows troubleshooter. But with so applications owned by so many different groups it would be difficult/near impossible to write a troubleshooter to integrate them together.

Though I am also a bit of a hackerman so I probably also don't realize how much I use the terminal for normal things.

Definetely yes for years now. However, CLI is still preferred.

Generally you can use use the GUI with things like Nobara Linux.

But most software install instructions are all "copy and paste these commands".

As a Linux Mint user who has only used Linux Mint, Yes, I've hardly used the Terminal, I've really only used it to download & run specific Software which is really just optional most of the time.

Windows refugee here. I installed Debian 13 with KDE Plasma on my main machine four months ago and I am still ironing out issues. Eg CUPS was asking me to login all the time and didn't accept my credentials. After some days researching I discovered I had to log in as root. Then, I discovered I didn't have root credentials for some reason. I had to create them and then add my local user to a group! Just to be able to use my home printer.

Or suddenly my clock was 62 minutes off. I discovered the NTP service was never set up properly and I had to install chrony.

I don't see how I could have avoided using the terminal. These are only a couple of examples. No deal-breakers and on this occasion I had the time and determination to resolve them. I could have easily given up.

I installed Linux for my mother 15 years ago and she has never used the terminal once.

I update the Ubuntu from time to time and that’s it. Everything works and she can browse the internet, read email and listen to music.

Just as much as you can use Windows without the command line/powershell.

The vast majority of tasks do not require it but some will and some tasks will be easier via the terminal if you take the time to read 2-3 pages of documentation.

Don't be scared of the terminal

Yes.

After god knows how many years now of being on Linux exclusively, I tend to look at the terminal (commands in general) as a convenience more than a necessity. Meaning that in a lot of cases, knowing a command and quickly typing it to start an update (for example) is just faster and easier than pulling up the GUI every time.

I don't know why you would want to use linux without the terminal? I mean, you can... but you'll be limited if you want to do something special or fix a problem. It's not like you have to know how to code or anything. Often you can copy the commands right into it... It's really no problem.

Can I? Yes. Will I? No.

Some things are just faster to do via terminal so I learned to use it over GUI for some scenarios.

With Linux Mint you don't need the terminal 99% of the time. The rest distros are close to 95% of the time. I always suggest Mint to new users.

I cannot vouch for every distro and every use case out there, but for me, yes you can daily drive without having anything to do with terminal. Some distros have worked a lot ensuring this.

I would recommend to start with Linux Mint.

SUSE has had graphical administration tools for literally decades. Somehow people always forget that.

turns off SteamDeck sorry, what's a "terminal"? Isn't it at the airport?

Jokes aside... yes, obviously, it only depends what you actually need to do. I recommend though NOT to be afraid of the terminal. The whole point about using Linux is to do whatever one wants. If that means avoiding the terminal, sure, that's fine, BUT I believe the goal still is to be able to do MORE and the terminal is itself a very powerful tool. It's not the terminal itself as much as the composability of the CLI.

So... finding a distribution with all the GUI and TUI and avoiding the CLI until they actually want to use them is great. Avoiding it entirely because no new skill was acquired is a missed opportunity IMHO. I want more Linux users, yes, but I also want BETTER users of any OS. Skilling up users so that we can all do more, together.

Using Linux Mint, most of what I use I could without terminals if I wish. However, just like with Windows, terminal intervention will be needed sooner or later, usually to figure out why a given program isn't working.

I was using Mint for a while with my 10 year old PC build that was crashing all the time then I upgraded my system and Mint didn't have support for my newer video card so I moved to Nobara.

I haven't had to use the terminal at all since. I run the update system program every few days but I'm sure it could be automated without needing a password but I like seeing what is being updated so I keep it manual.

It has much more support for games than Mint seems to have had. I could use the terminal if I wanted to but it hasn't been needed which is how I want it, available but unnecessary.

Does anything provide a similar experience to Arch’s amazing AUR

I am not aware of any software distribution service with a comparable experience (massive userbase with zero vetting for uploaders) as Arch's amazing AUR - if you are looking for a way to distribute malware to many unsuspecting people (who's friends think they're hackerman), it's really unparalleled. (😢)

To your primary question, yes, many people do successfully daily drive various Linux distros without ever opening the terminal. 🙄

Ive only used the terminal on my laptop for installing programs i could've installed from a gui, and for updating. Which i could've done on a gui.

So i think so? Manjaro btw

I would stay that for 95% of usual tasks I don't use terminal on Linux Mint Debian Faye 6 (LMDE), most of the software can be installed by double clicking a .deb file you download from the web. Compared to 10 years ago when I tried Linux for the first time (and reverted to Win back then) nowadys it is insanely more convenient to use.

As a Rust dev, you can use your terminal entirely without GUI with a multiplexer like tmux, Neovim as your editor, a shit ton of anime CLIs that you can use, and so on.

Bonus question: [...] Does anything provide a similar experience to Arch's amazing AUR?

Nixpkgs and Homebrew are the first ones that come from my head.

Unless you install fresh, run into NO issues. And basically do nothing but websurf, and basic functions, not likely.

Keep in mind, even IF something could be done by GUI, if you ask for help, 95% of the replies are immediately going to tell you to open CLI...

Remember Linux isn't an OS, it is a collection of 30+ different OSs that are mostly compatible.

Depends on what they are doing, but I guess it's pretty usable without cli interventions - at least for standard apps and unless something gets screwed. Fedora KDE.

I think Gnome + Flatpak is a great setup for GUI only. Fedora is annoying to set up with nonfree drivers and codecs, otherwise it's a great choice for this.

(Also, don't try convert your friends, just wait until they come to you and ask for help installing Linux.)

I've been using exclusively Linux for about two years now.

I only ever use the terminal when I need to fix something, usually by searching for a fix and trying it out. I know more about its use now but just enough to hurt myself.

I think it gives me strong UI opinions though. What works better for me. There is still a lot of choice in that.

i use the terminal for work, and some utilities i prefer over gui ones.

if my line of work didn't require it, i don't think it would be mandatory for me.