GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with the Unix command line. Point-and-click is wonderful whenever you need to do something once or twice. But if you need to repeat that task many times, the command line is your savior.
The command line is a window into the full, awesome power of your computer. If you long to break free of the constraints of the GUI or think that programming or administering remote machines is in your future, then learning the Unix command line is definitely for you.