It's Vim vs Ed. The shell is all powerful but sometimes it's easier to yyhpl (select the file for copying, then paste a symbolic link in the parent directory) than typing the commands to do so even with shell completion. Sometimes having visual feedback is good. But a GUI FM doesn't bring that much. I spend as much time with Ranger as Finder on macOS.

Are there any good lightweight file managers if one did want to use a GUI? Using the shell is second nature to me but sometimes it's nice to browse with a mouse.

Take a look at double commander: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/

However, if you use a desktop manager such as Xfce, the file manager (Thunar in this case) is built in and can be configured with traditional double window arrangement.

Midnight Commander is a good TUI file manager.

https://midnight-commander.org/

PCManFM is another good one if you're looking for a lightweight GUI file browser.

> It's Vim vs Ed.

No, not really.

Different tools have different strengths. There is some stuff you can do in a graphical file manager that would take you significantly longer to do on a shell.