I thought this post was going to be about avoiding using a GUI at all. 20 years ago or so I was running linux that way for a bit, just with every different take on a different virtual terminal. Mplayer playing video to the framebuffer if I need it, one terminal for mp3blaster, a couple of terminals for coding/editing etc. If I really needed it I could have a gui on one terminal for browsing also.

I still see people doing that kind of thing nowadays, but I mostly think it's an oddity or a quirk. GUI makes the same thing simpler without any downsides.

As for staying in the linux console in general, it's so much more efficient for so many things once you know, but it's not always superior, and it's odd to me there will always be people who argue that it is.

> There's no longer the same level of passion around which people wage wars over which Linux distribution is best.

Yeah, that was always kind of weird, not to mention the many contrarian BSD users. All the linux distros found their niche, and most now are a variation of some other distro with a different default desktop environment. These days the religious war is over systemd I think.

> Some people find it easier to select files to copy with the mouse in Nautilus, while others prefer to use the cp ~/photos/{photo,video}_*.{jpeg,jpg,JPG,avi} /media/BACKUP

This just depends on the use case. Trying to select photos containing a certain person only named numerically is much easier in a gui with thumbnails than on console.