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For some basic stuff like vim it works fine. But for almost everything else I'd rather a regular CLI tool or a web interface. I suspect a lot of the popularity

For some basic stuff like vim it works fine. But for almost everything else I'd rather a regular CLI tool or a web interface. I suspect a lot of the popularity comes from people who want to feel like a hacker using 10 terminal windows, but actually want a GUI like experience.

zbentley 5mo ago
This. A lot of folks picked it up for that reason when they were young and now are terminal-all-the-things out of sheer inertia.
xboxnolifes 5mo ago
Obviously people want GUIs. That's why TUIs should be compared to GUIs, not to CLIs. TUIs are nice since you get a lot of the benefits of a GUI, without having to leave the context of the terminal.
- yellowapple 5mo ago
  I feel like the better solution here (than trying to shoehorn a GUI into an interface meant for text) is to make terminal windows graphically-aware, like how things work in Plan 9.
  - SchemaLoad 5mo ago
    At that point what you want is just a tiling window manager rather than a terminal that supports GUIs.
    - yellowapple 5mo ago
      I already do use tiling window managers and they don't really accomplish the “if you launch a graphical app in a terminal window it takes over that terminal window” flow. Closest I've found is Niri's support for tabbed windows, but even that's just sticking the graphical app window on top of the terminal window instead of the terminal window itself becoming the app window.
    - calgoo 5mo ago
      Depends, I'm building a markdown down editor that just previews in the web ui. However, I can use the web ui to do tasks like uploading files, view git commits etc. Different interfaces for different purposes. The CLI gives me focused mode, and then visual stuff that steal my time goes in the web
bee_rider 5mo ago
Vim is special because 99% of what we do is editing text, and it is the text editor—the importance of that task overcomes the poor discoverability of a TUI. Most other programs should be CLI, so they can fit in the conventional command line toolbox.
ulrikrasmussen 5mo ago
For me, TUIs compensate for the fact that I can't get good remote GUI rendering on Linux. Yes, X11 tunneling exists, but the experience has always been abysmal for me for anything not hosted on a machine that sits on the same LAN as the client. For Wayland I don't even know if such a thing is possible since I don't think the architecture supports it. But the terminal is just fundamentally the wrong basic abstraction on which to build a structured GUI, it just happens to require few enough bits to be sent over the wire that it actually works reasonably well over SSH as opposed to pushing graphics.
- bitwize 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ulrikrasmussen 5mo ago
    Did you just invent a non-existent core Wayland developer and attack them for things they didn't say? I am all up for shitting on modern software stacks and praise the Unix philosophy, but I am really turned off by posts trying to make this a question about gender identity and generation, as if that has anything to do with it. Old cis-dudes come up with bad software architectures too.
    - bitwize 5mo ago
      Sorry, but it is kind of a generational thing. If you grew up in an environment where one set of assumptions always held, you are more likely to think that these assumptions are universals and just not even bother with the possibility that they might not be the case. This goes double if you're young; even bright young devs often have not had the breadth or depth of experience to consider that that crusty old protocol they're trying to get rid of due to "legacy cruft" is the way it is for a reason, one which is still reflected in the use cases of real users working today. This has direct bearing on the Wayland situation: one of the reasons why Wayland is having trouble getting traction against X11 is because the Wayland devs have lost sight of the fact that Wayland is designed to solve one set of problems and X11 another. And real Wayland developers have made the exact argument I attributed to my fictional one, just with fewer anime emoticons (and "watch this talk by Daniel Stone" as a final mic drop).
helterskelter 5mo ago
I dunno, pre-LLM TUI's at least tended to be okay, and keyboard navigation was a first class citizen. Besides, if you were using a TUI instead of a GUI then you basically always ended up saving memory/battery life, and TUI programs are generally more portable than trying to run some ancient GUI program. I typically prefer CLI myself but having a TUI to manage torrents for instance was much more ergonomic.
- SchemaLoad 5mo ago
  For almost every tui, a webui works better imo. Most torrent clients offer a web management ui and it's always going to be easier and more feature filled using a platform that was actually designed for it rather than hacking a gui in to the terminal.
  - sublinear 5mo ago
    Accessibility can also be much better in a web UI because the markup is more rigorously defined. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Accessibility_tree https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Accessibil...
    - lynx97 5mo ago
      Well, "better" is relative. Web UIs definitely have the advantage you are mentioning. However, they are also much slower to use, so it is a tradeoff. I am blind and do rely on accessiblity. But I would choose a TUI over a Web UI every day simply because the web is slow as hell. Feels like running away from a "monster" in a dream. You have rich details, but you are being drowned in unnecessary verbosity and an inherently slow stack of tools working together. The web might be accessible, but it is barely useable in practice.
      - sublinear 5mo ago
        That's interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'm curious which screen reader you're using and what can be configured to fix that experience.

zbentley 5mo ago

This. A lot of folks picked it up for that reason when they were young and now are terminal-all-the-things out of sheer inertia.

xboxnolifes 5mo ago

Obviously people want GUIs. That's why TUIs should be compared to GUIs, not to CLIs. TUIs are nice since you get a lot of the benefits of a GUI, without having to leave the context of the terminal.

yellowapple 5mo ago
I feel like the better solution here (than trying to shoehorn a GUI into an interface meant for text) is to make terminal windows graphically-aware, like how things work in Plan 9.
- SchemaLoad 5mo ago
  At that point what you want is just a tiling window manager rather than a terminal that supports GUIs.
  - yellowapple 5mo ago
    I already do use tiling window managers and they don't really accomplish the “if you launch a graphical app in a terminal window it takes over that terminal window” flow. Closest I've found is Niri's support for tabbed windows, but even that's just sticking the graphical app window on top of the terminal window instead of the terminal window itself becoming the app window.
  - calgoo 5mo ago
    Depends, I'm building a markdown down editor that just previews in the web ui. However, I can use the web ui to do tasks like uploading files, view git commits etc. Different interfaces for different purposes. The CLI gives me focused mode, and then visual stuff that steal my time goes in the web

bee_rider 5mo ago

Vim is special because 99% of what we do is editing text, and it is the text editor—the importance of that task overcomes the poor discoverability of a TUI. Most other programs should be CLI, so they can fit in the conventional command line toolbox.

ulrikrasmussen 5mo ago

For me, TUIs compensate for the fact that I can't get good remote GUI rendering on Linux. Yes, X11 tunneling exists, but the experience has always been abysmal for me for anything not hosted on a machine that sits on the same LAN as the client. For Wayland I don't even know if such a thing is possible since I don't think the architecture supports it. But the terminal is just fundamentally the wrong basic abstraction on which to build a structured GUI, it just happens to require few enough bits to be sent over the wire that it actually works reasonably well over SSH as opposed to pushing graphics.

bitwize 5mo ago
[flagged]
- ulrikrasmussen 5mo ago
  Did you just invent a non-existent core Wayland developer and attack them for things they didn't say? I am all up for shitting on modern software stacks and praise the Unix philosophy, but I am really turned off by posts trying to make this a question about gender identity and generation, as if that has anything to do with it. Old cis-dudes come up with bad software architectures too.
  - bitwize 5mo ago
    Sorry, but it is kind of a generational thing. If you grew up in an environment where one set of assumptions always held, you are more likely to think that these assumptions are universals and just not even bother with the possibility that they might not be the case. This goes double if you're young; even bright young devs often have not had the breadth or depth of experience to consider that that crusty old protocol they're trying to get rid of due to "legacy cruft" is the way it is for a reason, one which is still reflected in the use cases of real users working today. This has direct bearing on the Wayland situation: one of the reasons why Wayland is having trouble getting traction against X11 is because the Wayland devs have lost sight of the fact that Wayland is designed to solve one set of problems and X11 another. And real Wayland developers have made the exact argument I attributed to my fictional one, just with fewer anime emoticons (and "watch this talk by Daniel Stone" as a final mic drop).

helterskelter 5mo ago

I dunno, pre-LLM TUI's at least tended to be okay, and keyboard navigation was a first class citizen. Besides, if you were using a TUI instead of a GUI then you basically always ended up saving memory/battery life, and TUI programs are generally more portable than trying to run some ancient GUI program. I typically prefer CLI myself but having a TUI to manage torrents for instance was much more ergonomic.

SchemaLoad 5mo ago
For almost every tui, a webui works better imo. Most torrent clients offer a web management ui and it's always going to be easier and more feature filled using a platform that was actually designed for it rather than hacking a gui in to the terminal.
- sublinear 5mo ago
  Accessibility can also be much better in a web UI because the markup is more rigorously defined. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Accessibility_tree https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Accessibil...
  - lynx97 5mo ago
    Well, "better" is relative. Web UIs definitely have the advantage you are mentioning. However, they are also much slower to use, so it is a tradeoff. I am blind and do rely on accessiblity. But I would choose a TUI over a Web UI every day simply because the web is slow as hell. Feels like running away from a "monster" in a dream. You have rich details, but you are being drowned in unnecessary verbosity and an inherently slow stack of tools working together. The web might be accessible, but it is barely useable in practice.
    - sublinear 5mo ago
      That's interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'm curious which screen reader you're using and what can be configured to fix that experience.