I finally got Docker Desktop to work over the weekend, after months of not being able to sign in - from a browser or CLI.
Some GUIs are nice. I prefer GUIs to CLI. But some GUIs aren't as usable as CLI
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Please learn how to use the shell, everyone wins. Learning how to use the shell will enable you to do all kinds of things. Learning how to use some Gui will help you in that one instance, until that dev decides that it needs to be made better and prettier and you start looking for shit again
I don't need someone else to make a gui to enter commands for me.
There was a whole team of "engineers" that once told me, "using infrastructure as Code obfuscates things, using the GUI allows us to see exactly what is happening!"
They did not appreciate it when I told them to "git gud, or GTFO".
Subsequently the company hired 5 more automation engineers like me and the two dozen of ClickOps "engineers" were let go. Our productivity is even higher with the 6 of us compared to more than two dozen of them.
GUI is nice for hobbyists and mainstream consumers.
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So... I'm definitely cheering up for the lady in red.
Why? Am I an elitist asshole doing his best to sound smart?
Well yes, definitely BUT I also appreciate the power of the command line. The CLI isn't "cool" because of the cryptic command, no the CLI is cool because :
- ls (list files)
- ls *.txt (list all files ending with the .txt extension)
- ls *.txt | wc -l (count how of them are)
- etc
and the "etc" is the FUNDAMENTAL part! Namely that no matter how smart the GUI developer is, they can't predict how it is going to be used when done with OTHER tools. That's the true power of the CLI. So yes if you stick to a single command, the CLI is unnecessarily cryptic but as soon as you start to combine commands, nothing comes close to it.
Shoutout to qpwgraph devs
Simple things can work well in GUI.
Now, working on a GUI that tries to expose every little features? No thank you. I would not want to develop it, and I would not want to have to use it.
It's ok to go install a software through discover instead of using the CLI.
The only thing enthusiasts love more than obscure CLI commands is random github links. The next time someone sends me a github link without explicit instructions on how to turn the contents of that link into a program on my computer, I'm hiring some witches from Etsy to hex them
It's always fun when there's a GUI tool for something (in my case, trying to set up wireguard with gnome) that just doesn't work, and all the posts online about it just say "yeah that's literally never worked, here's the cli command"
Or colour profiles for your monitor in Wayland, you can change them in the gui but nothing will ever apply.
I find myself having trust issues with Linux GUI tools as actually functioning seems to be optional. But the switches sure look pretty...
I'd say the ideal situation is that tools are developed library first, then cli or gui as preferred allowing others to pick up the slack and make the other tool (or tools) using the functions in the library.
One of the reasons automation is so much easier on linux than windows is because there are many more cli tools to do things. On windows many tools are gui first and cannot easily be automated.
Step 1: Try several tools until you find one that works.