Novell Desktop Linux 10: getting closer to a toss up between Linux & Windows?

[Jan Panteltje]

If that's what you like then fine, but you have to realize that you're
ALWAYS going to be a VERY small minority. For the VAST majority
(read: 99%) of the world, this is going to be MUCH less efficient then
going through a GUI to find what they want most of the time. Only a
few crazy masochists are going to even try to learn even a fraction of
what all those applications are going to do, so spending the time
searching through the man pages to figure out what they need is not an
efficient use of time.

I pointed out SEVERAL times that I use fvwm a nine page pager, and that
gives one screen with icons and 8 with xterms.
So I have the good of both worlds.
And fvwm does not re-arange icons either like my win98 did.

As for the 'newer PC is better' or 'newer OS is better' it total nonsense.

I am testing Linux 2.6.15.2 , the 2.6 kernels have no longer OSS for the sound,
and yesterday it locked on audio DMA and I had to power down.
The kernel performance sucks relative to 2.45 kernel, the dvb driver sucks
and NOTHING new that is of ANY use I have come acrosss.

That is Linux, I'm sure Billy's windows is similar.
Not even metioning all the 'services' that run, power management that
does not work correctly, yes Linux sucks a lot in 2.6, maybe I will write my
own OS, getting tired of rewriting apps for each Linux kernel....

So new or faster PC usually only means use more power for the same thing
these days.
Well I do not care YOU pay your electricity bill I hope.

You do not read man pages?
What do you use a PC for then?
To click on mediaplayer to watch porn only?

This issue is that ONLY A MASOCHIST SEARCHES IN MS MENUS just to find it is
not in the sub-sub-sub-subs0ub menu(ater it flipepd back several times, so retry nnn),
while yiou KNWO the program is called 'mplayer' and you CAN type.
So mplayer mymovie.avi is SOOOOOO much faster.
And if you want bells and whiteless you type man mplayer.

You are free (if you do not like the word mplayer) to make a script or link
and call it 'm' too.
'm' is stil lfree on my system I notice, so hehe jus tdo not type 'rm'...
When youcan no longer take it be brave and do rm -rf /* and go watch baseball
or play with the cat .

 

[Jan Panteltje]

In a company of more than ~10 people, yes you DO need some form of 'IT
infrastructure' to replace a mouse. Or do you want your employees to
spend their working hours driving to the store to buy the mouse
themselves? Many employees could easily be costing the company $100
to go to the store just to pick up a mouse because theirs went bad.
And that's your best-case scenario. What happens when a power supply
or motherboard goes bad on your out-of-warranty computer?

You might not need a BIG IT department, it could well be just one
person that does this as only part of their job, but in anything other
then the smallest of small companies you need SOME kind of IT group.

Yes and no.
When you buy a monitor here you get 3 years guarantee and they come
to your place to fix it.
When you are a BIG IT company you have a a few mice in store (maybe even real ones),
but also a box full of these (even I have a bag full of used mice).
My bos (in BIG IT company many years ago) argued with IBM like this:
When will now no longer buy original IBM, because for the price we can get 2 clones,
and put one in storage for spare.
He did.
The fact is tha t 'the one in storage' was immediatly used too.
So that gives you redundancy

 

[Neil Maxwell]

My bos (in BIG IT company many years ago) argued with IBM like this:
When will now no longer buy original IBM, because for the price we can get 2 clones,
and put one in storage for spare.
He did.
The fact is tha t 'the one in storage' was immediatly used too.
So that gives you redundancy

Redundancy is not a replacement for a system. Say the spare stayed in
storage, and someone's box dies. You plop it on their desk.

What about their apps? Where's the data? How long will it take a
typical user to load all the updates, patches, service packs,
whatever?

If you don't care about data continuity, sure, leave it to the users
to replace their own stuff out of a storage cabinet full of components
and work out the software issues. Otherwise, you need a system, and
someone to plan and manage it.

 

[Tony Hill]

I pointed out SEVERAL times that I use fvwm a nine page pager, and that
gives one screen with icons and 8 with xterms.
So I have the good of both worlds.
And fvwm does not re-arange icons either like my win98 did.

As for the 'newer PC is better' or 'newer OS is better' it total nonsense.

I am testing Linux 2.6.15.2 , the 2.6 kernels have no longer OSS for the sound,

For my Linux box ALSA works a lot better than OSS did, and I can still
use all the old OSS-only applications through emulation.

and yesterday it locked on audio DMA and I had to power down.
The kernel performance sucks relative to 2.45 kernel, the dvb driver sucks
and NOTHING new that is of ANY use I have come acrosss.

Aside from all the new drivers (which you apparently don't need since
you're computer is 5 years old), it also has numerous improvements in
terms of pre-emptive kernel, memory management (particularly for large
quantities of memory, ie big workstations and servers) and thread
handling.. just to name a few things. Whether you need these or not
is another question altogether.

You do not read man pages?
What do you use a PC for then?

I tend to like using my PC to get work done rather than searching for
the right command to use! :>

To click on mediaplayer to watch porn only?

This issue is that ONLY A MASOCHIST SEARCHES IN MS MENUS just to find it is
not in the sub-sub-sub-subs0ub menu(ater it flipepd back several times, so retry nnn),
while yiou KNWO the program is called 'mplayer' and you CAN type.
So mplayer mymovie.avi is SOOOOOO much faster.
And if you want bells and whiteless you type man mplayer.

If I used Media Player often enough to require it I would have a icon
on my desktop or some shortcut bar. As it is though I just use file
association (both in Windows and Linux) to get Media Player/Mplayer to
play the video files. It's a whole lot easier to double-click on the
file I *JUST* downloaded then to type anything at all.

 

[The little lost angel]

This issue is that ONLY A MASOCHIST SEARCHES IN MS MENUS just to find it is
not in the sub-sub-sub-subs0ub menu(ater it flipepd back several times, so retry nnn),
while yiou KNWO the program is called 'mplayer' and you CAN type.
So mplayer mymovie.avi is SOOOOOO much faster.

Hmm, you store everything in the same directory?

Personally, I find it faster to find a file by browsing through a
hierachal directory/folder system then launching the app by
doubleclick.

As compared to typing something like \apps\media\mplayer
\home\downloads\movies\funny\spoofs\themovie.avi

especially if sometimes you decided some time ago themovie.avi would
be more suitable in \home\downloads\movies\funny\mtv

Then again, was that \downloads\ or \download\ ?

Sure you have perfect memory, power to you, but most of us don't and
prefer to spend our time doing something else more enjoyable than
memorizing file organisations on several drives, reading man pages and
remembering all those myriad switches options and such.

There are some things better done in GUI and some better done in CLI,
why restrict yourself?

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Hmm, you store everything in the same directory?

Personally, I find it faster to find a file by browsing through a
hierachal directory/folder system then launching the app by
doubleclick.

As compared to typing something like \apps\media\mplayer
\home\downloads\movies\funny\spoofs\themovie.avi

especially if sometimes you decided some time ago themovie.avi would
be more suitable in \home\downloads\movies\funny\mtv

Then again, was that \downloads\ or \download\ ?

Sure you have perfect memory, power to you, but most of us don't and
prefer to spend our time doing something else more enjoyable than
memorizing file organisations on several drives, reading man pages and
remembering all those myriad switches options and such.

There are some things better done in GUI and some better done in CLI,
why restrict yourself?

Yes OK, this 'path' to the file is important.
Sure, if you use text a lot, like right now, yes, I have a directory structure
and it is even different on 8 or so mounted partitions.
On the other hand Linux (Unix) has a well known (and sort of (almost) standardized
directory structure, you will not likely find the movies in /usr/bin for example ;-)
(OK MS people would put self-extracting there... LOL)
In 'VDR' as is sort of a standard, and most apps that I write there is a directory
/video
in my case it is split up in
/video/ts
/video/mpeg/
etc..
On the win partition it is called movies
But /video has become a sort of standard I think.
Sometimes you change to that dir, but indeed I usually type
xine /video/my_movie.ts
Not very difficult because I put it there.
But really good memory? No way should you assume that.
the issure with Unix (unlike MS products) is this, once a day 'updatedb' runs.
So now if you want to know where blues_brothers.ts is (for example, an this assumes
you have no clue about upper and lower case, where it is or how it is written on;y know it is a .ts format),
you could do
locate -i blues | grep -i ts
that would give you some hits.
I use 'locate' and 'grep' many times a day.
There is indeed no way to remember where exactly a file is, for example working with postgres,
instelling a new version, setting up databases and links, locate will find all stuff.
The most important tools:
updatedb
locate
grep
ls -rtla (just 'l' on my system, shows the last entry is a directory)
apropos
man

And locate is very fast, not like 'find'.

As you have discovered finding something across many disk and partitions with so many giga bytes
requires tools.
then just double click middle mouse on the relevant result, no typing involved:
Example:
grml: ~ # locate -i morning | grep mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/01-if_not_for_you_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/02-day_of_the_locusts_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/07-new_morning_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/08-mr_tambourine_man_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/12-father_of_night_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/dean_martin/21-carolina_in_the_morning_192_lame_cbr.mp3

so I double click middle mouse on the line with tambourine then type these 6 characters only
mpg123 <once click of the middle mosue button to insert the full pathfilename>ENTER
and it plays

As it is still on my screen, iIcan already click a next one i want to hear.
Of cause normally it plays aiutomatically from my playlists in xmpl (that I wrote).

I think I can do this faster then dilly dally with little windows and icons.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

For my Linux box ALSA works a lot better than OSS did, and I can still
use all the old OSS-only applications through emulation.

It seems here, that as I had 4 dsp devices (with 2 soundcards) in OSS, the
ALSA emulator (?) now only shows 2.
Also the mixer devices no longer correspond to the dsp devices.
So any programs that would change mixer /dev/mixer1 for audio /dev/dsp1
now do it for /dev/dsp0, bit of a disaster when a radio transmission is
running and you listen to some other sound in preview and mute it.

Aside from all the new drivers (which you apparently don't need since
you're computer is 5 years old), it also has numerous improvements in
terms of pre-emptive kernel, memory management (particularly for large
quantities of memory, ie big workstations and servers) and thread
handling.. just to name a few things. Whether you need these or not
is another question altogether.

Yes, 'improvements':
'lost interrupt' (on various hd devices and audio),
4 x longer time to access my postgres database (why? need to sort this out)
no longer 'update' the 'update' program allowed you to control
how often the buffers flush, you could set it short to for example get fast
transfer of pictures from the security cams (via LAN).
Absense of 'update' is a big minus.
Actually Linus severely pissed me of.
First I disagreed when he did not want GPL3 for the kernel license (denounce
DRM), but I do agree that DRM should be possible,
Then he claimed that he wanted 'vendor pull' for reiserfs4 to go in the kernel,
OK so Linus is 100% the commercial tour, fine for him.
For me the OS is the accumulated work of thousands of programmers who contributed
free time and ideas.
F*ck the vendor pull, there was no vendor pull when he wrote that kernel either.
So time for a new kernel.

I tend to like using my PC to get work done rather than searching for
the right command to use! :> locate

If I used Media Player often enough to require it I would have a icon
on my desktop or some shortcut bar. As it is though I just use file
association (both in Windows and Linux) to get Media Player/Mplayer to
play the video files. It's a whole lot easier to double-click on the
file I *JUST* downloaded then to type anything at all.

When one has only one file, I have several thousand, and several hundered
DVDS (I made), lots of pieces of movies all over the place.
To organize these in a 'project like setup' (per movie) the idea
implemented in the subtitle editor 'xste' (you can download from my site)
makes things a bit easier.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Redundancy is not a replacement for a system. Say the spare stayed in
storage, and someone's box dies. You plop it on their desk.

What about their apps? Where's the data? How long will it take a
typical user to load all the updates, patches, service packs,
whatever?

If you don't care about data continuity, sure, leave it to the users
to replace their own stuff out of a storage cabinet full of components
and work out the software issues. Otherwise, you need a system, and
someone to plan and manage it.

Maybe 'big IT company' is different to you then it is to me.
In a 'big IT company there would always be somebody to ask for help
with that (I have done this myself, however busy you may be, you help
a collega to get up and going if they walk into your office and ask).
And that can happen to the best ones...
On the other hand, the guys that worled in the big IT company *I* was
in, were very capable programmers, who had the backups in the cabinet
behind them, backups made every day, and the big stuff (licensed app
software) in the company safe.
But if your definition of 'big IT company' is just the local travel agency with
5 PCs and 6 non technical travel advisors, then yes..... in that case there
SHOULD be a fully configured spare 'terminal' as that is all it is - a terminal-.

 

[Keith]

Maybe 'big IT company' is different to you then it is to me.
Evidently.

In a 'big IT company there would always be somebody to ask for help
with that (I have done this myself, however busy you may be, you help
a collega to get up and going if they walk into your office and ask).

Ah, and this ad-hoc "support" is somehow free? Time == money, and all
that.

And that can happen to the best ones...
On the other hand, the guys that worled in the big IT company *I* was
in, were very capable programmers, who had the backups in the cabinet
behind them, backups made every day, and the big stuff (licensed app
software) in the company safe.

And you think that is "backup"? What about a fire in the building?

But if your definition of 'big IT company' is just the local travel agency with
5 PCs and 6 non technical travel advisors, then yes..... in that case there
SHOULD be a fully configured spare 'terminal' as that is all it is - a terminal-.

No, it sounds like that's the sort of company *you* work for.

 

[The little lost angel]

On the other hand Linux (Unix) has a well known (and sort of (almost) standardized
directory structure, you will not likely find the movies in /usr/bin for example ;-)
(OK MS people would put self-extracting there... LOL)

Not to me honestly, the default Linux/Unix structure just don't make
sense. Instead of a USRobotics folder, why didn't they call it user
and instead of bin, making the whole thing sounds like the user's
trashbin, why didn't they call it /user/programs ?

Futhermore, I find it a mess to have everything installed into
programs or Program Files for that matter. It isn't intuitive to me so
standardized or not, it's a learning curve and memory work compared to
a graphical tree representation.

In 'VDR' as is sort of a standard, and most apps that I write there is a directory
/video
in my case it is split up in
/video/ts
/video/mpeg/
etc..
On the win partition it is called movies
But /video has become a sort of standard I think.
Sometimes you change to that dir, but indeed I usually type
xine /video/my_movie.ts

This sounds exactly like erm a guy geek's way of doing things. Why
would anybody want to arrange my movies or music based on whether they
are .ts or .mpeg??? I prefer them as things like "tv serials" "movies"
"funny clips" "anime" nevermind if they are .ogg .ts .avi or .wat

Not very difficult because I put it there.
But really good memory? No way should you assume that.
the issure with Unix (unlike MS products) is this, once a day 'updatedb' runs.
So now if you want to know where blues_brothers.ts is (for example, an this assumes
you have no clue about upper and lower case, where it is or how it is written on;y know it is a .ts format),
you could do
locate -i blues | grep -i ts
that would give you some hits.
I use 'locate' and 'grep' many times a day.
There is indeed no way to remember where exactly a file is, for example working with postgres,
instelling a new version, setting up databases and links, locate will find all stuff.

I think I can click Explorer > Download Drive > Movies > Sad Movies
and find Blues_Brothers.ts faster

The most important tools:
updatedb
locate
grep
ls -rtla (just 'l' on my system, shows the last entry is a directory)
apropos
man

And locate is very fast, not like 'find'.

As you have discovered finding something across many disk and partitions with so many giga bytes
requires tools.

Hence rather than forcing users or yourself to suffer the need to type
so many things and wait for processing, it's faster to use a GUI on a
file organisation that's personally intuitive and meaningful.

then just double click middle mouse on the relevant result, no typing involved:
Example:
grml: ~ # locate -i morning | grep mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/01-if_not_for_you_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/02-day_of_the_locusts_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/07-new_morning_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/08-mr_tambourine_man_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/bob_dylan/new_morning/12-father_of_night_192_lame_cbr.mp3
/video/sound/other/dean_martin/21-carolina_in_the_morning_192_lame_cbr.mp3

so I double click middle mouse on the line with tambourine then type these 6 characters only
mpg123 <once click of the middle mosue button to insert the full pathfilename>ENTER
and it plays

As it is still on my screen, iIcan already click a next one i want to hear.
Of cause normally it plays aiutomatically from my playlists in xmpl (that I wrote).

I think I can do this faster then dilly dally with little windows and icons.

Ah, but in this case you ARE using a WIMP graphical interface, albeit
with very primitive graphics. You have a full screen Window, textual
Icons, a Mouse and Pointer! See, it does make sense ultimately to have
some form of GUI for various kind of work.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

Not to me honestly,

Fair enough. There's no disputing taste. Much of Unix and
other Linux-like systems is very old (1970) and knowing the history
helps understanding why things are

the default Linux/Unix structure just don't make sense.
Instead of a USRobotics folder, why didn't they call it user

USRobotics did not exist at the time. /usr was to save typing,
and many Unix commands show similar bizzarre abbreviations.

and instead of bin, making the whole thing sounds like the
user's trashbin, why didn't they call it /user/programs ?

/bin is for "binaries". 'bin' is a NOT synonym for garbage
in American english.

Futhermore, I find it a mess to have everything installed
into programs or Program Files for that matter. It isn't
intuitive to me so standardized or not, it's a learning curve
and memory work compared to a graphical tree representation.

Everything is memory work to some extent. Unix is supposed
to split packages, and store things in functional directories:
/bin for binaries, /lib for libs, /etc for config, / directory
for system essentials, /usr for optional components, /usr/local/
for custom "just this box" software. /usr/man for manual pages.
There a lot more around Filesystem Standards.

MS-DOS/Windows has typically does things very differently: packages
are stored in their own directory, all together, like C:\LOTUS123 .
This is great for installs & removes, but is hard for the system
to share libs and even to find all pgm components sometimes.

This sounds exactly like erm a guy geek's way of doing
things. Why would anybody want to arrange my movies or
music based on whether they are .ts or .mpeg??? I prefer
them as things like "tv serials" "movies" "funny clips"
"anime" nevermind if they are .ogg .ts .avi or .wat

Certainly. You are well entitled to organize your data
however you wish.

I think I can click Explorer > Download Drive > Movies >
Sad Movies and find Blues_Brothers.ts faster

Only if you are reasonably certain where it is. And even then,
mousing is more ergonomically taxing than it appears. The `locate`
will find it wherever you might have stashed it.

Hence rather than forcing users or yourself to suffer the
need to type so many things and wait for processing, it's
faster to use a GUI on a file organisation that's personally
intuitive and meaningful.

Personally, I find `locate` so useful that I even build and
maintain the database on my MS-Win2k box at work (along with
the rest of the commands). I have trouble remembering in what
sub-sub directory I stashed a file, and `grep target database`
is both fast and intuitive for me. Of course, I did invest some
time years ago learning `grep` and friends. I think it has paid
off well for me, but might not for more casual users.

Ah, but in this case you ARE using a WIMP graphical
interface, albeit with very primitive graphics. You have a
full screen Window, textual Icons, a Mouse and Pointer! See,
it does make sense ultimately to have some form of GUI for
various kind of work.

I would not say a GUI is useless. Au contraire -- how better to
do graphical things like drawing layout? The mouse cut'n'paste
is also useful (available for CLI via selection/gpm).

The real problem with a GUI is that it is a menuing system. Very
limited choice, and forced visual memory. Made more confusing by
"Personalized Menus". The cryptic icons are explained by Tooltips.
A more subtle problem is the GUI cannot do pipelines which is
were the real strength of the CLI comes from.

-- Robert

 

[The little lost angel]

MS-DOS/Windows has typically does things very differently: packages
are stored in their own directory, all together, like C:\LOTUS123 .
This is great for installs & removes, but is hard for the system
to share libs and even to find all pgm components sometimes.

To be honest, I've always felt this was a better way to do things
compared to the the Linux way or the Windows registry nowadays. Apart
from space saving (which isn't that major a thing nowadays), isn't it
better to have each programs keep their stuff to themselves to avoid
version conflicts, ability to use different versions of the same
prog/lib at the same time without clashes and ease of
installation/removal?

I would not say a GUI is useless. Au contraire -- how better to
do graphical things like drawing layout? The mouse cut'n'paste
is also useful (available for CLI via selection/gpm).

The real problem with a GUI is that it is a menuing system. Very
limited choice, and forced visual memory. Made more confusing by
"Personalized Menus". The cryptic icons are explained by Tooltips.
A more subtle problem is the GUI cannot do pipelines which is
were the real strength of the CLI comes from.

Definitely, there are things I'd rather do with a CLI, renaming a
whole directory of files being the first to mind. Just that I get the
impression that Jan thinks everybody should just use CLI and scrap
GUI. Hence the long point that GUI does have it's place and even he
uses it in some form.

It is a lot easier to click a box and retype or retick an option than
to retype a whole line after discovering you forgot to add a -L or
something. More so for folks who don't work very well with obscure
names and options abbrevations that don't make any sense.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

And you think that is "backup"? What about a fire in the building?

You are *that* dissatisfied with that job?

 

[Jan Panteltje]

I would not say a GUI is useless. Au contraire -- how better to
do graphical things like drawing layout? The mouse cut'n'paste
is also useful (available for CLI via selection/gpm).

The real problem with a GUI is that it is a menuing system. Very
limited choice, and forced visual memory. Made more confusing by
"Personalized Menus". The cryptic icons are explained by Tooltips.
A more subtle problem is the GUI cannot do pipelines which is
were the real strength of the CLI comes from.

I think some of the confusion perhaps comes from not understanding Unix X windows.
When you are using a 'xterm' a text terminal in X windows, you are STILL
fully GUI capable.

And the 3 button mouse, 2 left clicks select a word, 3 a sentence, one middle
mouse click pastes at cursor.

Normally I do not run the linux console command line but always an xterm or rxvt.
And very intensively use the 9 virtual screens fvwm gives.
Here are screen shots from some of these, nice big, good readable (in 800x600).
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/d/
(I hope the ftp works for you, just have a new server up).
You will have to look at these files in a real picture viewer, the browser will
not likely be able to show any detail.
I cannot show the other 2 screens because one holds the weblog trace (would
disclose users) and the other the security cam.

Some ask why 800x600? Well you know European DVB (digital satellite TV) is
in 720x576 so fits nicely without being too small.

For HDTV you can simply change resolution in X with ctrl alt + or -

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

I think some of the confusion perhaps comes from not
understanding Unix X windows. When you are using a 'xterm' a
text terminal in X windows, you are STILL fully GUI capable.

Yes, and I frequently see X screens just populated with
a series of xterms. Personally, I prefer using SVGATextMode
and running Linux virtual consoles at 160x73 chars.

And the 3 button mouse, 2 left clicks select a word, 3 a
sentence, one middle mouse click pastes at cursor.

Yes, and gpm does the cut'n'paste in CLI

ftp://panteltje.com/pub/d/ (I hope the ftp works for you,

Nope. Didn't work for me.

-- Robert

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

To be honest, I've always felt this was a better way to do
things compared to the the Linux way or the Windows registry
nowadays. Apart from space saving (which isn't that major
a thing nowadays), isn't it better to have each programs
keep their stuff to themselves to avoid version conflicts,
ability to use different versions of the same prog/lib at the
same time without clashes and ease of installation/removal?

Yes, you have a point. A problem might come if you expect
programs to work together.

Definitely, there are things I'd rather do with a CLI, renaming
a whole directory of files being the first to mind.

Yes, this is an excellent example. Actually, renaming is slightly
more difficult under Unix because the shell does * expansion,
not the pgms.

Just that I get the impression that Jan thinks everybody
should just use CLI and scrap GUI. Hence the long point that
GUI does have it's place and even he uses it in some form.

I wouldn't assume that anyone is that closed minded.
Email is known to cause misunderstandings leading to flamewars:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70179-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

It is a lot easier to click a box and retype or retick an
option than to retype a whole line after discovering you
forgot to add a -L or something. More so for folks who don't
work very well with obscure names and options abbrevations
that don't make any sense.

Perhaps. But that is what command history fixes. Just up
arrow and re-edit the command line. There are other niceties
like command- and filename completion to save grief on typing
long names. `bash` is not COMMAND.COM!

-- Robert

 

[George Macdonald]

Personally, I find `locate` so useful that I even build and
maintain the database on my MS-Win2k box at work (along with
the rest of the commands). I have trouble remembering in what
sub-sub directory I stashed a file, and `grep target database`
is both fast and intuitive for me. Of course, I did invest some
time years ago learning `grep` and friends. I think it has paid
off well for me, but might not for more casual users.

Hmm, I have to say I've found grep et.al. umm, also easy to forget - I've
invested the "time" 3 or 4 times over many years with each new brush with
Unix *and* had to endure the (x)sh du jour and even had to mess with two
different flavors at the same time at one point... which I found extremely
frustrating.

I would not say a GUI is useless. Au contraire -- how better to
do graphical things like drawing layout? The mouse cut'n'paste
is also useful (available for CLI via selection/gpm).

The real problem with a GUI is that it is a menuing system. Very
limited choice, and forced visual memory. Made more confusing by
"Personalized Menus". The cryptic icons are explained by Tooltips.
A more subtle problem is the GUI cannot do pipelines which is
were the real strength of the CLI comes from.

I've heard people describe Windows menuing interface as intuitive - what
utter tripe!... consistent *can* be its strength if programmers don't
wander too far. While I think we're all aware of the strengths of a CLI,
any suggestion of going without a GUI would be absurd - Jan's GUI avoidance
is err, perverted.

 

[Keith]

You are *that* dissatisfied with that job?

WTF are you on about now? Maybe you Europeons haven't invented fire yet?

 

[The little lost angel]

Perhaps. But that is what command history fixes. Just up
arrow and re-edit the command line. There are other niceties
like command- and filename completion to save grief on typing
long names. `bash` is not COMMAND.COM!

Hmm interesting! I didn't know the shells can do filename completion
nowadays! That might make things a lot easier. Every year or so, I
make one attempt at setting up a *nix box and it always end up as too
much of a tedium to use

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

NOT X Windows.

It is X Window (singular).

I think some of the confusion perhaps comes from not understanding Unix X
windows.
When you are using a 'xterm' a text terminal in X windows, you are STILL
fully GUI capable.