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by bendiksolheim 1893 days ago
> I'm not sure if this is satire or not, but certainly the single worst case of using a terminal is file manipulation. Nothing will ever beat the right-clicks or Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V combos. It's just more natural to "see" things that you move.

This might be the case for you, but please don’t mistake it for an objective truth. I find the terminal far superior for file manipulation than any of the graphical file explorers I have used. I especially find copying quite clumsy, as I either have to open several windows and navigate to the correct locations, or leave the source folder behind as I navigate to the destination. In my terminal I can stay in the source folder if I want to, and even navigate directly to the destination with a short, generic command.

3 comments

I think this article might be satire because it spends so much time on files. Either that or it was written in 1992.

How many users have an iPhone or iPad as their primary computer? How often are they manipulating files?

Where's the "you don't need a gui" entry for making phone calls, sending messages, playing music, using GPS, etc... While you can certainly do all those things by command line, few people would argue it's a better experience.

Objectively nothing beats software such as Midnight Commander, Krusader, Total Commander,... for file manipulation. You can do common operations with single clicks or shortcuts and they also have the shell integrated for less common operations.
Two pane window managers with a third pane for previews because I keep downloading pdfs and shit and I really need to know what is inside pog3715.pdf
Have you ever used Dired, the file explorer included in Emacs?