I tell people who are curious about Linux that you really don’t need to open a terminal to run a Desktop. The terminal is a scary thing for noobs.
They get the willies when you start talking about it. While it is true that modern desktops provide pretty much all the point-and-click functionality you could ever need, between you and me, I know that the real power of Linux lives on the command line. You can do amazing things with just a few keystrokes if you have a bit of knowledge under your belt. One of those amazing things is that you can automate just about anything using Cron.