I agree with your sentiment but if you find the CLI to be a lack luster interface the only thing I can think is that you've not spent enough time using it corre

I agree with your sentiment but if you find the CLI to be a lack luster interface the only thing I can think is that you've not spent enough time using it correctly. I was a Windows guy, then an OS X guy, then a Linux guy. I found that I preferred CLI more than GUI's so I moved to Linux full time when I started getting frustrated with GUI tools and Darwin ports and the like. Now days it annoys me if a library doesn't have a CLI. Even on my personal machines I run the least amount of GUI possible for resource and usability purposes. I don't want a new GUI or a better CLI (zsh, csh, bash, ksh, etc. do just fine). I just want tools that utilize it properly to support it's most powerful functionality (pipes, output redirect, proper exit codes, etc.) A lack of familiarity with it is no institutes fault, it's a personal fault, if you find your self looking at a CLI interface, and then resorting to searching Google for a GUI wrapper for that interface, the ignorance isn't due to a failure of the CLI, it's a failure of the user being intimidated or ignorant. Also I have no issues writing shell scripts, I use them all the time to save me tons of work. If you're a programmer then you really get to know your system and you really get to customize it to your liking. An example would be switching to i3 from Gnome/KDE. I was a long time KDE/Gnome/XFCE user and my laptops track pad settings would never stick after a reboot when I used the GUI tools for disabling the touchpad tap to click or just disabling it in general (thinkpad nipples ftw). After moving to i3 and really getting more access to the core of the system I ended writing a couple little shell scripts for enabling disabling my touchpad for when I need/want it. What used to be a 5 step operation (open gui > click tab > uncheck box > click save) has now become (super+space, type disa[tab](autocomplete disable.touchpad), enter). I have a second script to enable it again, the contents of which are small. #!/bin/bash exec synclient TouchpadOff=1