Even though I am a strong advocate of learning as much as you can about using the command line, I admit I like my GUI a lot (and Compiz of course ). The CLI can be really useful for repairing your system or just doing some task that takes far more clicks in the graphical interface. For instance, in Debian it is much easier to open the console and write apt-get install abiword than to wait for Synaptic to load, search for Abiword, click the check-box, confirm the install and close the front end.

Sometimes you will find yourself in a situation when you don’t want the app to stop working when X is restarted or broken. Sometimes you just want a very light application, and nothing is faster than a text interface. For example, when I install the new nvidia drivers on Debian it sometimes breaks my system - but I want to listen to a podcast while doing the repair work. If I used Banshee, the thing would stop playing when I restarted X. By opening a virtual terminal, by pressing say Ctrl+Alt+F4, I fire up sox and play the mp3 in there. Works great and X does not interfere with the playback!

So what can new users do with the command-line while enjoying the GUI? There is a multitude of applications that do the same jobs as their graphical equivalents, but are not dependent on X. Using them is just a matter of learning a few simple commands. You’ll be up and running in no time.

Also, check out CLI-apps.org where you can find lots more!

1) rtorrent is a powerful CLI torrent client. While the interface itself is very “empty”, it can do most of the things other full-featured torrent clients do. Find the torrent file by pressing Return (or Enter) and navigating to your torretn file. rtorrent.rc configuration file, you can normally find an example in /usr/share/doc/rtorrent/examples/rtorrent.rc

Even though the program will warn you there is no such file on first start, you may use this exampel configuration file to setup rtorrent for maximum speed, IP masking etc.
You can find out more about configuring it and a few mroe tips and screens here. An alternative to rtorrent is a similar program called (Enhanced) ctorrent.

2) w3m is a great little web browser for the console. It features tables, tabs, frames, SSL connections, color and even inline images on suitable terminals.  When you are not in X, w3m becomes a great way of searching Google and forums when you are troubleshooting. The navigation is very easy when you get used to it and w3m renders pages surprisingly well, even Gmail. Emacs uses w3m to display pages in the text editor itself.

Note: w3m’s homepage hasn’t been updated, so I’m not linking it. Just Google w3m to find otu more about it. Also, every distribution should have w3m either installed or in the primary repos.

3) bashpodder As a podcast listener, I must not forget to add bashpodder to my list. It is an extremely simple and robust command-line podcatching client written by Linc from the Linux Link Tech Show podcast. While the setup requires you to do some manual work, the program itself actually uses wget behind the scenes and is the perfect client for older computers or people who just like it simple - you only need wget, sed and bash.

There are GUIs available for bashpodder, too (like the depicted KPodder).

4) finch is probably already on your computer, if you installed Pidgin. This surprisingly advanced CLI multi-protocol instant messaging client enables you to use most of the features you get in Pidgin, without the need of a graphical interface. The UI is pretty simple, but at the same time easy to understand. Just run ‘finch’ in the shell and try it out, if you already have Pidgin on your machine.

5) Mutt and 6) Alpine are email clients for the command-line. They are the ‘mammoths’ of email, as they have existed for almost about ten years now. Bot have their advantages and disadvantages (for instance, Newsgroups support is much better in Alpine). Personally I would recommend using Gmail in w3m if you already want to have email in the CLI, though many people use text-based email clients, especially Alpine, which is a descendant of Pine.

Read more about these two mail clients here, where the author is much more knowledgeable about them than me. Even though it is a ghastly translation of a German article, I believe you won’t have any trouble understanding it.

Do you still use any CLI apps? What do you think about CLI applications? Tell us in the comments.