This is a series of five articles treating about GNU/Linux command line interface as a great way of both exploring and simply using this operating system. It covers basics features of the CLI including file management, pipes, streams, redirections, regular expressions, system variables and more.
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Member since:2006-10-08
"Linux distro's have actually shielded or dumbed down the user interaction such as 'Ubuntu' comes to mind."
Furthermore, as I mentioned somewhere else, security barriers are abandoned in order to increase individual feelings of comfort.
"However the way they are doing it is wrong, basically trying to clone Windows. This is the most aggravating aspect of the entire desktop push why not be unique I cannot comprehend the forced adoption of a MS Windows methodology."
It's all about usage share, about giving the user what he already knows. Because business and industry are widely infiltrated by MICROS~1 products, users seem to think: "I want the same pictures at home as I know them from my work."
"Being a Linux Admin I spend 90% of my day in the CLI however I like it and the raw power behind the command line will never be replaced no matter how fancy of a 'gui' style of utility comes out. Much less doing bash/perl scripting to running awk-sed type returns on certain data types the list goes on and on."
The CLI allows you to implement stack processing according to your very individual needs, while similar stack processing mapped onto GUI applications can only be a subset of the first mentioned set.
Additionally, the CLI is fully programmable. And it's not obsolete in any way: Developers still need to use the keyboard in order to create applications, in order to make the buttons a user can click on.
Seen from a psychological point of view, the CLI is the more intelligent solution. Before you continue reading, I'd like to state that I don't want to insult anyone or say anything against the use of the mouse. When clicking on an icon, the user does follow the same cognitive and motorical way an infant does. The child points with the finger on what it wants (a concrete object usually) and says "Gah!" or "Dah!" (At least, it says this in Germany, I don't know what it would say in english.) But in fact, the child does not say a real word or a sentence. A similar behaviour is clicking. Choosing characters from a keyboard in order to form words (and maybe arbitrary combinations of characters that represent commands, redirectors or scopes) requires the ability to speak, regarding to the infant example.
"CLI is infinite in the power range it possesses the only limitation is the end user in front of the keyboard."
Professional CLI usage requires knowledge. Gain of knowledge requires time. Users are busy and want the result, they're not interested in the way. And some of them (a minority, I hope) is completely learning-resistent (in german: merkbefreit).
The CLI allows a special level of abstraction (such as variables, iteration, grouping) that makes it very powerful in the right hands.
Member since:2006-01-04
Seen from a psychological point of view, the CLI is the more intelligent solution. Before you continue reading, I'd like to state that I don't want to insult anyone or say anything against the use of the mouse. When clicking on an icon, the user does follow the same cognitive and motorical way an infant does. The child points with the finger on what it wants (a concrete object usually) and says "Gah!" or "Dah!" (At least, it says this in Germany, I don't know what it would say in english.) But in fact, the child does not say a real word or a sentence. A similar behaviour is clicking. Choosing characters from a keyboard in order to form words (and maybe arbitrary combinations of characters that represent commands, redirectors or scopes) requires the ability to speak, regarding to the infant example.
Not exactly. Some time both are needed.
When programming or using visualization engines both type of users interfaces are absolutely required.
A fully accelerated hardware OpenGl/GUI and a CLI for compilations, running tests and gathering informations.
Hardware OpenGL for output graphics results of compiled programs. Nice Qt/GTK widgets to control/show parameters of geometric objects such as in basic operations such as translations,rotations, scaling or much more complex.
In the second, the development part you need a console/CLI to see to waring or error messages sended by GUI or visualization.
Will be almost impossible without CLI to see/pass parameters of an unknown ./configure script.
Best way to debug using GDB is also CLI to solve mysterious and unforeseeable crush of a GUI application.
Not to mention the possibility of shell/perl/wathever scripting capabilities of command line.
A good innovation to CLI is possibility to use wheel mouse button to scroll content of man pages, less or vim output.
Can tell me somebody a nice GUI frontend to ldd command in *nix ?
Edited 2007-10-06 17:45
Member since:2005-11-05
I also happen to be a Linux Admin for a pretty large company (> 3000 Linux servers). However, my work laptop runs Ubuntu because I don't like having to set things up.
Why spend a day setting up a stage2 gentoo install (no flames intended) when I can spend an hour tops, set up a usable Ubuntu install, rsyncing my keys over, and start getting work done? It just makese sense.
If you mean the gui is hidden in that you don't have to manually do everything yourself what part of that is bad? Ubuntu / Fedora / openSUSE / Mandriva are all doing good things by making Linux usable for people who don't want to be technical.
Don't think I'm advocating using the gui for everything either. Notice the massive flame I posted to this completely clueless Ubuntu guy's stupid blog posting about how "The Future of Linux Administration will be with GUI Tools":
http://useopensource.blogspot.com/2007/08/linux-administration-will...
Member since:
2007-09-10
Linux distro's have actually shielded or dumbed down the user interaction such as 'Ubuntu' comes to mind. However the way they are doing it is wrong, basically trying to clone Windows. This is the most aggravating aspect of the entire desktop push why not be unique I cannot comprehend the forced adoption of a MS Windows methodology.
Being a Linux Admin I spend 90% of my day in the CLI however I like it and the raw power behind the command line will never be replaced no matter how fancy of a 'gui' style of utility comes out. Much less doing bash/perl scripting to running awk-sed type returns on certain data types the list goes on and on.
CLI is infinite in the power range it possesses the only limitation is the end user in front of the keyboard.