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.

Midnight Commander is a good TUI file manager.

https://midnight-commander.org/

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.

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.