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@rodneylives@mefi.social
Post #1967370
2026-05-03 17:15 UTC
There are two poles of Linux use.
There's people who use it like they used Windows, as a GUI with settings and knobs. You usually get your software out of a repository, and if you don't a .deb now looks just like a .msi installer. If you're using Mint or Ubuntu, it'll look very familiar to you.
But it's a lot easier than on Windows to drop down to the underlevel. The terminal prompt. It's like the old DOS prompt, but far more powerful, and actually easier to use.
An example. Last night I needed a way that would take screenshots of my desktop every minute. To do that, you can either find a premade slab of program with knobs and dials that won't even quite work exactly how you want it to, or, if you have a command line tool that takes a single screenshot (the one I found was called grim), you can open a terminal and just do:
while true; do grim; sleep 60; done
A single line that replaces a dozen miscellaneous bespoke tools! Stop it with Ctrl-C.
That's the power of a command line
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And then, a new world opens up to you. It has its quirks too. You learn to keep your filenames short so more will fit on screen when you use ls, and not to add spaces to them because those multiply your hassles.
But there's so much power there, especially behind the two-letter commands.
ls. cd. cp. mv. rm. df. dd. if. vi. Linux pros love the command line but, humorously, they hate typing. Modern shells also have search and even autocomplete, and scrolling through previous commands with up and down arrows.
You don't HAVE to use any of this, pretty much ever. But it's there if you need it... or if, someday, you want it.
An excellent way to dip your toes into this world is with Julia "b0rk" Evans series of one-image explainers: wizardzines.com/comics/
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