I choose to use terminal because I can update my software without requiring a restart (I used Debian btw); for some reason, GNOME’s Software app cannot do this without restarting. I also prefer terminal-based text-editing for coding and scripting.

Depending on use-case, you can absolutely just use the distro without ever touching the terminal. It requires extra work to sift through all the online advice and docs that center around CLI commands though. The Average Windows User won’t be digging that deep in their system to customize the shit out of it like an Arch user, so they won’t need to touch the stuff that can only be accessed via command line. The Above Average Windows User will already be comfortable with the command prompt anyway.

Which distribution is the most user-friendly while still updated packages?

All of them? Why would a distro choose to be hostile to its users? (/s)

I assume you mean “beginner friendly”? In that case, I would stick to Debian: more stability than windows, harder to break than Arch, and lighter-weight than Fedora.

Those are the only 3 I’ve daily driven in the past couple of years, and that’s my takeaways. I can’t give informed input on any of the popular derivatives, except Ubuntu which I did use for awhile (back in 2014-2016): it was more prone to breaking shit than Debian, less beginner-friendly too (fuck Snaps, and fuck your Pro subscription data-harvesting up-selling bullshit).

there’s three thing I use the terminal for:

Updating my apps and systems Running development apps Quick and easy edits or file movements

So I am a new Linux user (Bazzite) and what I have experienced so far is that for my daily driver use I don’t need the terminal at all. But the moment I want to do anything even slightly more complex, or even just to use a program I want that is not in bazaar, all the user documentation gives me terminal commands.

So while I am sure it is possible, in reality the terminal still remains prominent and it feels really important to know to use it.

Just lie and say they will never need to touch the terminal, then help them out when they need to and eventually they will see its not a big deal

Can I? Yes. Will I? No.

Some things are just faster to do via terminal so I learned to use it over GUI for some scenarios.

over the years i’ve had trouble with the various app stores like Discover and Pop!_Shop which for me led to the use of the terminal. other than that there is the occasional permissions issue that may have a graphical solution but i’ve always used chown on the command line.

I’ve been using Bazzite for a year without ever touching the terminal. I came from Windows.

SUSE has had graphical administration tools for literally decades. Somehow people always forget that.

Yes, generally you can. I run Linux Mint and can count the number of times that I HAD to use the terminal. There are plenty of times where I choose to use the terminal because it’s faster though.

I kind of ‘force-moved’ my wife to Fedora about 2 years ago, and she had never seen the terminal until last week. I saw she was about to open ‘discover’ to update everything, and I stopped her, opened the terminal and ran a dnf update, one ‘put your password in there’, and she was looking at it as if it was magic. Can you use it without the terminal entirely? Pretty sure you can. Now, should you?

Nope. Every Linux distribution I’ve used has needed access to command line at some point. If anything goes awry people will always give you steps how to fix it from command line.

Now I’m not saying all this couldn’t be done graphically, but you very rarely find steps that way.

Yes it is possible. I never need the terminal. If you are interested, you can usually find a GUI way if you look for one. Some people just don’t look, then tell people there is no GUI for it. Not very helpful for newbies.

For those not into usability, different people work in different ways. Visual workers are not the same as text workers. So for some, CLI has poor usability and productivity. For lots of things I do, there isn’t a CLI anyway.

I use Kubuntu these days. It could be better.

I rarely touch my terminal and do so only because I am already familiar with it. I should use it more. I don’t think its any more necessary to use the terminal in linux than it is in windows for a computer user. I consider zorin the most user friendly and mainly because its out of the box (when its installed it has software already on that fits for most things people want to do with a computer.)

I cannot vouch for every distro and every use case out there, but for me, yes you can daily drive without having anything to do with terminal. Some distros have worked a lot ensuring this.

I would recommend to start with Linux Mint.

With Linux Mint you don’t need the terminal 99% of the time. The rest distros are close to 95% of the time. I always suggest Mint to new users.