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Can you give examples of the GUI and CLI integration? I have a mac, but mostly use a Linux desktop, so I don't know what I'm missing.


Drag and drop an item from Finder to the terminal and it expands to its full path. Not sure if Linux does something similar as I'm not a regular user.


It does, under modern DE, KDE/Plasma does this.


No comparison is fair if someone hasn't used Plasma.

I could not care less about "freedom" or these other philosophical aspects of Linux.

Plasma is just straight up amazing on every level.


I also quite like the 'open' command to do the opposite.


The Linux equivalent of this one is "see", an alias to the run-mailcap program, which on Ubuntu is in the "mime-support" package, which is probably installed by default.


Drag and drop almost anything into the CLI produce a sensible result. Open command works as if you double clicked the item in Finder, which means it can be used to open directories, launch a program associated with that file etc.

In addition because mac use commad+C, command+V for copy paste rather than ctrl+C and ctrl+V as Linux and Windows, you feel no different working from a CLI than from any other app. You don't have to mentally jump in and out of two different ways of working.

This extends all the way into GUI apps. Typical CLI commands keys work in all mac GUI apps. I can use readline keys such as ctrl+a, ctrl+e for moving the cursor e.g. Works even in office apps like Keynote and Pages.

It is very frustrating to not be able to use these Unix conventions on Linux!!

There are lots of little things like this which makes a superior experience IMHO.


I only use KDE, so I can't comment on Gnome etc.

Dragging a file into Konsole (KDE's terminal) gives a menu with the options "Copy here", "Link here" and "Paste location". Seems reasonable.

Dragging a hyperlink or image from Chromium gave the same options. "Copy" downloaded the file, although set a timestamp in 2106 for some reason. This doesn't work from Firefox.

Dragging selected text pastes it in.

"see ." opens the current directory in the file browser thing, "see thing.odt" opens LibreOffice, "see my.pdf", etc. "see http://example.org" doesn't work, although I can right-click the link to open it. (Naturally, "alias open=see" if you prefer that word.)

I set a custom shortcut for Konsole for "Super+C" etc (Windows/Cmd key), but I don't use it very often. I mostly select + middle click to paste, which is a Unix convention I miss on a Mac! The readline keys are nice, they seem to work about 80% of the time on a Mac, and I haven't found a way to get that working in Linux.

My "lots of little things" favours KDE. Properly maximizing a window, having a "keep above" button for any window, focus-follows-mouse, and the general feeling that the computer does what I ask in a boring way, not what it thinks I want in a stylish way.




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