Who need GUI apps when you can do these things on CLI:
- view image:
imcat my-image.png - watch video, even YouTube:
mpv --vo=tct "https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJa32lCaaY" - browse the web using modern Firefox engine:
browsh - listen to your Spotify playlists:
spt play --name "Your Playlist" --playlist --random
and perhaps many more I’m not currently aware of…
While this is not a serious post I’m going to take it seriously, so here are some of the reasons:
Nobody can easily remember the precise file name and if you don’t get the first letters right you’re screwed(did I mention capital letters matter?)
Wtf is --vo=tct? No sane person is remembering all of that (same goes for the rest 10000 parameters and options)
Again, waaayyy too many parameters, who remembers their playlist name? There is no autocomplete here, you’re on your sad own in your sad little room with your sad little feelings, because there’s no one there to tell you the song’s precise name, because computers are assholes and don’t hate you.
So why GUIs? Because they make computers seem like friendly fellas which actually care about you and give you options, tell you the available functions(without deciphering a 50 pages manual if done well)
If you take it seriously, then at least your complaints should be reasonable, not meme-worthy.
Autocomplete is a standard feature in CLI nowadays, so no need to remember everything.
And parameters usually have names chosen to make the most sense and to be memorable (e.g. vo = video output).
Serious person here.
Can autocomplete fill in a YouTube URL or Spotify playlist name? Can I browse the list of what’s available and filter, drill down, poke around according to my whimsy?
Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?
Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?
Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?
Maybe there are good answers to the above questions—I don’t know and would love to find out—but they and many more like them are surely reasonable and far from meme-worthy, or else I’m missing something huge.
Imcat is awesome, Debian and had a news reader with the same name.
MPV refuses to play any YouTube for me I suspect it has something to do with their new restrictions on YouTube DL.
Browsh looks absolutely magnificent until I actually try to use it, It seems like submitting form pages or maybe JavaScript is broken
You’ can try installing yt-dlp. That one is still actively maintained. YouTube also actively trying to broke it, so the one available in debian repo might be out of date.
looks like it is using DLP backend, didn’t read the whole error
[ytdl_hook] ERROR: [youtube] BBJa32lCaaY: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U
[ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
Failed to recognize file format.
Let’s hope youtube hasn’t finally ground the project permanently
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=BBJa32lCaaY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
