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to Linux users

A mixture.

I often have a terminal window open that I am using. When it comes to file management I have never found a gui based file manager that approaches the power and flexibilty of the bash command line.

As a program launcher, a simple [tab][tab] will list the hundreds of apps I have available to use. I know of no similar feature in the gui.

Keep in mind though that I usually do these things on a terminal window open in the GUI. I use KDE.

I think the loss of the command line is sad and strongly feel that it is actually frequently more intuitive than a GUI. I often long for the old days of DOS when you could usually fix someone's problem by saying "type this in and hit enter". Talking people through problems with a GUI only interface can be enormously frustrating.
 
What jimlintott said goes for me:

Well, both, kid of -- I love my GUI (KDE is my choice for desktop) but I mainly love it because I can launch a bunch of terminal windows. My most-used applications are probably (in roughyl order from most-used to least): bash, vim, and perl -- with nods to grep and locate.

In fact the only GUI based application I use on a regular basis is -- besides the terminal emulator -- Firefox (and Konqueror -- it rocks!). But I also lean heavily on wget, curl, links, lynx, and even netcat. There's a bag of tools right there.

I find the difference between the GUI and the commandline boils down to one of "discovery." If you don't know quite what you want to do, the GUI is a great way to figure it out. If, on the other hand, you know exactly what you want to do, the commandline is typically the best way to do it. It's a bit harder to learn and you're tasked with either remembering the options you use or looking them up constantly... but if you can manage all that, then the power of pipes is absolutely freaking unstoppable.

Speaking of which, I've heard a lot about the new pipe-like system in .NET. MS is finally trying to catch up to that kind of power. Unfortuantely, they seemed to miss the boat a bit, we'll see how it works out.
 
I'm a bit of a novice with Linux, so I generally stick with the GUI, but I can perform basic tasks in the terminal when I have to.
 
Command line or GUI

I'm still an inveterate command line user, but I was well into postgrad work before even setting eyes on an X-term so I've always stuck to what I know. And in fact on my *bsd boxes I haven't even installed the graphics stuff as I know I'll never use it.
 
I only use Linux for servers, and they have no GUI installed. I manage them via SSH and Webmin from, well....a Windows XP machine. I have too much stuff dependent on MS to use a Linux desktop, as much as I'd like to be able to eliminate all things MS from my life. Hey, it pays a lot of bills...
 

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