On one hand it's in the acronym command line interface and on the other
"was wondering if anyone had any solid recommendations for applications that one can use in a terminal window" it really looks like he meant to express console apps not cli I think you are correct.
sure, conceptually it does, but that's not the point.
what matters for most is the fact that i can run the application in a text only terminal, on any machine (remote or local), from any device (be it linux, windows, mac or even a mobile phone (ok, that's rarely practical, but it's possible))
> what matters for most is the fact that i can run the application in a text only terminal, on any machine (remote or local), from any device (be it linux, windows, mac or even a mobile phone (ok, that's rarely practical, but it's possible))
> a GUI does not offer that advantage
Sure, not in the terminal, but X forwarding is a thing and works on every system I've had to use it on.
it doesn't work on the majority of systems i have to work with, which is servers that don't have the necessary tools installed.
it's also very susceptible to latency and most applications don't handle slow connections in a usable manner. (they are designed with the expectation that the gui always responds instantly)
to get something of a tmux/screen like experience, xpra is available, which is an awesome piece of work, but it doesn't help with the latency. even over just local wifi i have some applications become unusable over xpra when they work ok over plain remote X.
the problem is not necessarily X but in part GUI in general. i can't click the mouse anywhere until the respective UI item is visible, so i have to wait for that.
on a commandline on the other hand in most cases i can keep typing even on extremely slow connections because i can anticipate what will happen and i know what keys are appropriate to type next.
using mosh i even get something like editable typeahead which is a marvel and very hard to imagine on X.
Oh, I never said I _enjoyed_ X forwarding, or even use it frequently. My point was just that remote access in a similar way to a shell is possible with a GUI, and could be made even better if X had a means of not having to draw everything but left it up to the toolkit on the other end.
But yes, in general, a shell is just much better:)
"was wondering if anyone had any solid recommendations for applications that one can use in a terminal window" it really looks like he meant to express console apps not cli I think you are correct.