Does the commend line scare you?

[chcarnage]

I don't like it. Well, I'm not outright scared. But I don't agree that it's simpler e.g. to define video converter parameters in the terminal. Using the terminal to me means that somebody hasn't had the time to write a GUI for his program, nothing else. (/long time Mac user)

 

[Hyperblaze]

Originally posted by: chcarnage
I don't like it. Well, I'm not outright scared. But I don't agree that it's simpler e.g. to define video converter parameters in the terminal. Using the terminal to me means that somebody hasn't had the time to write a GUI for his program, nothing else. (/long time Mac user)

to some....it's quicker to type in the console then to use the gui. Search for example.

in linux....

find / -name "file"

to search for a file name

grep -ri 'data' *

to search for a name in a file

i find it's quicker to type that then to use the mouse and click to a bunch of different locations, type down the search word and then click search

in the console you can do whatever you want. in a gui, you need to load up the gui, and then click click click (all that wasted time)

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Markbnj

My point is that the vast majority of people don't encounter lots of problems. Doesn't mean that being able to attack problems creatively isn't usefull and that is what the command line provides over a GUI.

I think "you guys" always miss the point. Computers are now appliances, well on their way to disappearing into the woodwork alltogether. In a decade or two you won't even see them on the desktop. A decade or two after that you won't even know where the computer is anymore. Yes, for engineers and operating system designers, and who knows what other groups of people command line interfaces may still be useful. Nobody else will use them, ever again. The only people who think that CLIs will remain relevant are a small portion of tech-savvy 'puter geeks (i.e., the "Linux community") who, deep down inside, love the idea of a cryptic interface that few people understand. Every now and then one of them likes to hold it up and say "Look, this isn't that scary, is it?" They do this not to promote the use of the CLI among the non tech-savvy, which would ultimately not be to their liking, but rather to enjoy the horrified looks on the faces of ordinary users. It is a subtle form of mockery 😉.

Um, wow. My wife (about the most computer-scared person I know) understood it when I showed her that you can just type 'calc' and get the calculator or 'notepad' and get the notepad, instead of drilling down through the start menu. Does that scare YOU?

OMG yes it does. If she can get to calc so easily, who knows where it will end! So, it's easier for her to click start, type 'cmd', click ok, type 'calc', and hit return than it is to click start, click all programs, click accesories, and click calculator? Or you put an icon on the desktop for cmd.exe, and she double clicks that? Or maybe you just have cmd.exe running all the time? What about programs whose binaries are not on the path?

Contrived examples ftw.

better then all that is just Windows key + R (opens a run dialog) calc, enter. You now didn't have to take your hands of the keyboard!

Windows key shortcuts are nice for those of us who don't like using the mouse much.

 

[Nothinman]

But I don't agree that it's simpler e.g. to define video converter parameters in the terminal. Using the terminal to me means that somebody hasn't had the time to write a GUI for his program, nothing else. (/long time Mac user)

Video is a good example because I find both to be equally confusing. Since I don't know how what most of the acronyms mean or what the values do putting them in a drop down box as opposed to having me type them into the CLI does absolutely nothing for me. And yes no GUI might mean that they didn't have the time to write one for it, but it may also mean they didn't need one for themselves. They might have wrote the tool for batch processing which is usually easier done in the CLI with some shell wildcards and/or shell scripts than it is in a GUI.

 

[Chaotic42]

I love it. You get complete control over what is going on, it can be faster than digging through menus, and the grey-on-black is just very soothing. 😀

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: nweaver

better then all that is just Windows key + R (opens a run dialog) calc, enter. You now didn't have to take your hands of the keyboard!

Windows key shortcuts are nice for those of us who don't like using the mouse much.

Ah, I really need to take that Winkey + R shortcut to heart. I always forget to use it.

 

[Bateluer]

I don't recall hearing someone rave about upgrading to MacOS X or Vista because its got a new robust command line. 😛

Bottom line, for an OS to be successful to the masses, you have to be able to go through day to day tasks in a GUI. Linux will never even come close to Windows level of influence until they do.

I wholeheartly support and back Linux and GPL software, I'm just telling it like it is.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't recall hearing someone rave about upgrading to MacOS X or Vista because its got a new robust command line.

Most of the UNIX users who bought Macs definitely were... Apple's whole "It's really UNIX underneath" marketing campaign ran for quite a while.

 

[drag]

Yep. Nobody realy cares about command line on the desktop.. but I think it's mostly because most people didn't have a decent command line system to actually use since DOS 6.22.

OS X and Vista is just to point out that propriatory OS manufacturers realised that a decent command line is a asset, not something to hide like with Windows 2000. If Apple was to now turn around and get rid of allowing users to access the darwin portion of the operating system via the command line you'd have a hell of a lot more people bitching about it missing then people who actually looked forward to it when OS X came out.

But Apple only gets it partially right with OS X. There is still a huge division between the 'Unix' portions of the system and 'MacOS'. The integration isn't very good. GUI apps and command line apps use different ways to access the file systems and it makes for a artificial barrier for making the most of the command line.

For instance in OS X you have the HFS+ file system. The 'native' way of accessing it is to use the "volumename😀irectoryname:filename" convention. That is how the Aqua stuff will access it. With the Unix portion they use BSD VFS stuff in the kernel to translate it into a Unix-style syntax like: /etc/cups/cups.conf

That is one big division that makes using the command line effectively in OS X more difficult then it has to be.

Another one that I ran into with it is with mounting network shares and such. I don't know if MacOS fixed it with newer updates.. but if your trying to mount a remote share via the command line it will cause Finder to flip out. Since finder is the basis for all things GUI it makes everything pretty much worthless.

If Apple was to more effectively resolve the two split personalities of it's operating system then it probably make it a lot nicer.

Now with Linux they do a much better job, but everything is still very cryptic to new users. It's gotten a bit better, (effective tab completion helps) but everybody that cares about usability is concentrating only on the GUI portions, which is understandable.

If your curious about a attempt to simplify the command line I suggest trying out 'fish'. It has syntax highlighting. Errors are descriptive. And for the first time ever 'help' is a command that actually does what it is for.

For instance if you type:
help
it launches a browser with basic usage documentation for fish.

If you type:
help ls
it gives you the man file for ls.

It's still pretty buggy though. If your using Debian unstable it should be aviable. Maybe in testing. Ubuntu users should have it, if not the Debian packages should work.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Netsh is a great example of this. It's 10 kinds of awful hassle getting crap done in there when compared to the GUI. ... it can be scripted though

If the people that wrote it find it complicated that means there's something wrong with your CLI then. Same thing goes for PowerShell (gay name btw), I installed it and started playing with it but it's a PITA to figure out how to do simple things that I'm used to in bash. I realize there's going to be some learning curve but it just seems over engineered to the extreme.

It's not that there is anything wrong with the CLI in netsh, it's just that many things it does naturally work better in the GUI. Some things are just like this. Browsing folders is an example. Even with autocomplete the GUI is going to be faster browsing (unless you have some extreme example where you can two-character+autocomplete your way around).

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: nweaver

better then all that is just Windows key + R (opens a run dialog) calc, enter. You now didn't have to take your hands of the keyboard!

Windows key shortcuts are nice for those of us who don't like using the mouse much.

Ah, I really need to take that Winkey + R shortcut to heart. I always forget to use it.

Windows + E is a favorite.
Windows + D (do it twice to see)
Windows + L

yada.

See helpfiles for a big list.

ctrl-shift-esc
windows+pause

tons of them out there.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Netsh is a great example of this. It's 10 kinds of awful hassle getting crap done in there when compared to the GUI. ... it can be scripted though

If the people that wrote it find it complicated that means there's something wrong with your CLI then. Same thing goes for PowerShell (gay name btw), I installed it and started playing with it but it's a PITA to figure out how to do simple things that I'm used to in bash. I realize there's going to be some learning curve but it just seems over engineered to the extreme.

It's not that there is anything wrong with the CLI in netsh, it's just that many things it does naturally work better in the GUI. Some things are just like this. Browsing folders is an example. Even with autocomplete the GUI is going to be faster browsing (unless you have some extreme example where you can two-character+autocomplete your way around).

Depends what you mean 'browsing folders'. If you mean openning up a dozen folders and trying to figure out what is in there.. then ya sure GUI is much faster.

But if your trying to get to a specific folder in a file system with directories 2 or 3 deep then command line is much faster.

One thing a GUI is great for is quickly assessing the contents of folders. With linux you can use ls --color to assign colors to different types of files.. But with nautilus you get thumbnails of the contents of the files, which helps a lot in selecting a paticular media file for instance out of a folder with hundreds. Or selecting a image file. Icons help you discerne file types quickly also.

But there is still big room for improvements in GUI.
For instance I like this demo.. It's a OpenGL based file manager for Gnome/Linux desktop:
http://macslow.thepimp.net/?page_id=18

There is no way any command line will be able to do something as nearly as well as handling information for human interaction. Imagine that with a large touch screen and the ability to manage multiple input devices (aka: your hands/fingers)

 

[Smilin]

Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

Can't remember the last time I actually browsed to windows\system32 for instance.

Windows also has some of those odd gui/cmd/run things that speed stuff up too. To get to your hosts file fast, do windows+R and type "drivers" and you've just jumped into the GUI and halfway browsed there.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

With good tab completion I'd say they're about the same, infact most of the time when I use the Gnome dialogs I hit CTRL+L and type out the path because it's quicker although it's not quite as good as bash.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

Can't remember the last time I actually browsed to windows\system32 for instance.

Windows also has some of those odd gui/cmd/run things that speed stuff up too. To get to your hosts file fast, do windows+R and type "drivers" and you've just jumped into the GUI and halfway browsed there.

Ya. I don't have a Windows machine handy so I don't know what all those things do.

But you have similar things with Linux, of course.

For example:
Open up a nautlius window...
ctrl-l -- opens up the 'location' dialog type paths..
You can do paths on your directory system, but also you can do remote shares via the gnome-vfs stuff buy using URL syntax.
For instance say you have a remote ssh somewere.
ctrl-l
ssh://user@machine.name/path

Supports a few of them. SMB, ftp, ssh are probably the most common.

Also in nautilus say you have a big directory full of files. I always have a very hard time scanning through a GUI file manager to find files. It's usually slow miss what I am looking for, even in alphabetal order. I guess I am retarded like that.

But you can hit ctrl-f to do a search string, or you can simply type out the name of the file and it will highlight the first matches as you go. Then you hit 'enter' to open the file when it's highlighted the one you want.

Just for normal desktop usage..
alt-f2 (configurable shortcut in Gnome) to open the 'run' dialog.
You can type out commands, typically. I find it's easier sometimes to run programs if I know their names then to go through the application menus and find what I want.

If you just start typing it'll try to do a smart match for applications and will try to autocomplete for you.
If you type out a directory or filename then it will try to autocomplete that for you as well as launching it with the defualt application.

There is bunches of stuff like that.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

With good tab completion I'd say they're about the same, infact most of the time when I use the Gnome dialogs I hit CTRL+L and type out the path because it's quicker although it's not quite as good as bash.

indeed, when in windows I do a Winkey+R and type in the path, as I can get it quicker then GUI.


as an FYI the Ubuntu browser is nice, as you can get a sample when you mouseover .mp3 files 😀

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

With good tab completion I'd say they're about the same, infact most of the time when I use the Gnome dialogs I hit CTRL+L and type out the path because it's quicker although it's not quite as good as bash.

indeed, when in windows I do a Winkey+R and type in the path, as I can get it quicker then GUI.


as an FYI the Ubuntu browser is nice, as you can get a sample when you mouseover .mp3 files 😀

Agreed....when you know the path ahead of time and there are no collisions in your autocompletion.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Yeah, CLI is pretty quick for getting you to a specific directory if it's short. GUI is better overall though.

With good tab completion I'd say they're about the same, infact most of the time when I use the Gnome dialogs I hit CTRL+L and type out the path because it's quicker although it's not quite as good as bash.

indeed, when in windows I do a Winkey+R and type in the path, as I can get it quicker then GUI.


as an FYI the Ubuntu browser is nice, as you can get a sample when you mouseover .mp3 files 😀

Agreed....when you know the path ahead of time and there are no collisions in your autocompletion.

If there is collisions you just hit tab twice and it shows possible choices.

drag@tweety ~> cd D
DavinciCode/ (Directory) Downloads/ (Directory)

Right? Pretty simple.

(edit)
or

drag@tweety ~> open Downloads/
$nloads/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_305kb.mp4 (MPEG-4 video, 126MB)
$nloads/004.mpg (MPEG video, 2.7MB)
$nloads/78088.pdf (PDF document, 1.4MB)
$nloads/amide-0.8.17\(1\).tgz (Tar archive (gzip-compressed), 1.3MB)
$nloads/amide-0.8.17.tgz (Tar archive (gzip-compressed), 1.3MB)
$nloads/amide-0.8.17/ (Directory)
$nloads/BU303_mac_v1.2.pdf (PDF document, 370kB)
$nloads/cntydoug.pdf (PDF document, 846kB)
$nloads/gomonkey-divx-small.avi (AVI video, 66MB)
$nloads/GPSInfo\ Users\ Guide.pdf\\x04PDF\ document,\ 988kB
$nloads/Help_Me_Rhonda_Sessions.mp3 (MP3 audio, 35MB)
$nloads/hurl.exe (DOS/Windows executable, 313532612608B)
$nloads/iscsi_msst05.pdf (PDF document, 115kB)
$nloads/MSST05-iSCSI-paper-final.pdf (PDF document, 115kB)

😛
(/edit)

If you don't know your path ahead of time, how do you know were to go?

That's why I like the find command and the locate command.
Then when I know the path I just copy and paste it from the terminal into the gui or the terminal.

 

[Nothinman]

Agreed....when you know the path ahead of time and there are no collisions in your autocompletion.

Collisions only suck in cmd because of the way it cycles through the choices, bash and Gnome will type for you up until it hits a non-unique character so you only need to continue with another letter or two until it can complete it for you the rest of the way.

 

[rivan]

Sometimes it's the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's not. As with any useful or powerful tool, there will be people afraid to use it - and others who will profess to be afraid of it just to avoid having to learn how to use it.

...LIke my wife with the lawnmower.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: rivan
Sometimes it's the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's not. As with any useful or powerful tool, there will be people afraid to use it - and others who will profess to be afraid of it just to avoid having to learn how to use it.

...LIke my wife with the lawnmower.

She have one foot?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: rivan
Sometimes it's the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's not. As with any useful or powerful tool, there will be people afraid to use it - and others who will profess to be afraid of it just to avoid having to learn how to use it.

...LIke my wife with the lawnmower.

She have one foot?

Well I don't know about you, but my wife loved it when I got the lawn mower for her birthday. I just like how her face lights up when I give her a better way to make me happy. It went down as almost as well as when I got her rubber boots for christmas so that she didn't have to stand in the snow in her high heals anymore when she was washing my car.

😉

Anyways.. back to internet psuedo-reality...

My ultimate point on the command line vs gui is that there is no real command line vs gui. Utlimately they are both complimentary, one is not nearly as good as both of them together. That's 'synergy', or the sum of the objects is greater then their parts.

If you have a modern easy to use CLI system (as opposed to the old-school cryptic Unix interface or the near useless UI provided by the Windows CLI) this is a huge asset to any operating system and given the opportunity a significant number of hte computer literate population will find great use for it.

I figure the future is going to see a tighter and tighter integration of command line structure into GUI systems and visa versa. There is currently too great of a division between the command line and gui interface in most modern systems for it to be realy usefull right now.