The Emacs subreddit has an excellent thread on terminal versus GUI for Emacs. It started when iamquah asked if there were any large disadvantages to running Emacs in a terminal rather than using the GUI version. He’s a recent convert from Vim so he’s naturally inclined toward the terminal as most Vi/Vim users are. Among his reasons for wanting to run in a terminal is that he frequently logs on to remote systems and running the terminal Emacs is more light-weight than trying to run a GUI over SSH.
The rest of the thread takes his concerns seriously and provides a good discussion of the benefits of running GUI Emacs over terminal Emacs. Tramp, of course, solves the remote editing use case in a superior way regardless of which mode you run Emacs in. There are some disadvantages to running Emacs in a terminal—although they may not affect your particular workflow—and the thread discusses these in an evenhanded way.
Aaron Bieber is a longtime Vim user who converted to Emacs and gave a very interesting talk about that conversion (I wrote about the video of his talk here). He chimed in with a pointer to his recent post that says you shouldn’t use terminal Emacs. Bieber argues, convincingly I think, that the GUI version offers much that the terminal version doesn’t have while the terminal version offers nothing that the GUI version doesn’t have. Bieber’s post is worth reading on its own.
There is, I’m sure, someone out there with a use case that is best met with terminal Emacs and others who simply prefer working in a terminal. Nonetheless, the Reddit thread and Bieber’s post have convinced me that for most of us, running Emacs as a GUI is the better solution. If you feel otherwise or have a compelling use case for terminal mode be sure to leave a comment. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say.