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The Latest And Greatest Console Applications?
An anonymous reader writes "While the 'Linux on the desktop' battle has yet to be won, KDE and Gnome are making great progress. There are too many apps to list on the cutting edge of software development for the X environment. But what about those of us stuck with old machines? Or who just want to work with the console? What console-based apps, that are undergoing just as much development as their X counterparts, do you use? Things like instant messengers and bittorrent clients, for example..."
Centericq rocks. I use it for icq, and occasional peep at irc channels. No need to stress the mousehand, and it also has a very small footprint. It's apt-gettable, so there's no excuse to not try it :).
One advantage of text based apps is the fact that no window management is required, so minimal keyboard driven window managers like ion and ratpoison can be used optimally.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Grep still has my vote
Really with suitable macro you can make vi to do all these things like e-mail, IM, bittorrent and web surfing. Really a great editor.
Because I can take old parts, stick them in a box, install linux, hide the box under my desk (or wherever) and ssh into it.
All my gruntwork, downloading, bittorrents, etc, run on that old box, never to bother my good machine.
Taking the time to type 'screen btorrent blahblah.iso.torrent' is more convenient than having my main machine slow to a crawl after torrent opens 9 billion connections.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
because you can leave IM session in screen :) and log out
Why, except in a few rare cases, would you regularly use a command line IM client in favor of a graphical one? It seems terribly inconvenient.
:-)
By command-line I assume you mean text-based (curses/whatever)...
Text based interface can be much more usable, even if it os often less learnable. learnability != uasbility. There is certain amount of "control" in simple text interfaces that you don't have with GUI's which pop subwindows everywhere, have annoying MDI interfaces etc.
Text interfaces also have a distinct technical advantage - they can be detached from the controlling terminal (see 'screen', 'dtach').
Also check out this
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The world's premier pr0n-leeching tool.
To be fair, I'm not sure how much development is happening with this tool. How can you improve perfection?
Because command-line clients can be screened. X apps can't.
A quick check through my history, and a look at open terminal windows, tells me that most of what I do with the command line is directly related to what I would consider the Operating System. I see a ton of ls, cd, more, dig, tar, gzip, etc. I also see myself using ssh to do OS-type things on other *nix machines. The second place for frequency, though probably first for amount of time using, goes to all of those vim sessions. Lastly, I see a lot of Perl and gcc.
Essentially, I don't use a lot of newly developed tools - or even, for that matter, tools that are still being heavily developed. I don't use the command line to browse, and I don't use it to check mail (though there are a few pines in there). The core of my user experience still feels like it's commands, but in fact, the mindless things that take most of my time are done in a graphical environment (like typing this post). The only tools I see myself using that aren't older than me are tools used for security work (a wonderful list of which you may find here), and the occasional bout of StreamRipper.
Somehow, after this post, I feel less like a console jockey than I thought I was. A better question might be: what do console users need?
Paper Pusher
Midnight Commander...
When doing some rough copying stuff or space-cleaning. I intuitively remembered the commands from 'Norton Commander' from many years ago.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
vi
I know, I know someone else got modded as flamebait, but its just not right to list emacs without vi.
All the console apps are perfect the way they are. There is no possible way to improve them. GUI apps are just now getting the same functions that console apps have had for the last decade. The little improvement that is happening with GUI apps is mainly with the GUI itself. All they've been doing it tweaking the design and look/fell of their apps.
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." - Soren Kier
Why, except in a few rare cases, would you regularly use a command line IM client in favor of a graphical one? It seems terribly inconvenient.
Instant Messaging is text-based, right? Why WOULDN'T you use a console app over a more bloated graphical one?
Not to mention, it's easier to do through a ssh session and not get busted talking to your wife or doing something useful for the company. Beware corporate keyloggers though. If you are that far into a big dumb company, you probably can't have Putty and you might as well give up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
the best part of 'screen' is that it's detachable from the physical console (or virtual terminal). here are two good uses for screen:
1: i start a large calculation at work in screen, detach it from the terminal, then when i go home i re-attach it to the terminal on my home computer to check the status.
2: my friend only has a weak wireless connection at home, it's not stable enough for him to keep a terminal open for a while. so he runs screen, and starts his work there, if anything craps out on him, he can just re attach and go on as if nothing were different.
both cases are nice for us computational chemists who just write quick and dirty programs that do hard number crunching. most of our programs are tied to the terminal and if the terminal closes, we can easily lose days of computation. i know there are ways around it, but it's just easier to use screen and put all our effort into the chemistry part of the programming.
How about Image Magik?
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Stupid preview.
Should be "kibitz <username>" and "type 'kibitz -number' to kibitz with <username>".
yeah.. because i just LOVE how the default bitchx settings auto-kick/ban users who auto-rejoin 4 times in a row! what a great feature to annoy the living CRAP out of me. it's also great how bitchx often says fairly offensive stuff whenever i quit. it's just going out of it's way to try and get me banned from some channels.
the writers of that app are tard monkeys. use irssi. at least it wasn't written by ScRiPt kiddies.
- tristan
You can still get it, at least as source code, from here. I still use it and it works reasonably well.
It has a nice, friendly Configure script that'll get it to build on modern Linux systems without any fuss.
The main problems with it are that the Q00L new features are poorly documented, as is how to turn them off, and the that the source code is terrifying. Remember, this was the program that Larry Wall was going to rewrite just before he got distracted by Perl, after which it switched maintainers before finally being (apparently) abandoned.
Still, for all its problems, I haven't found a better news reader. I considered XEmacs GNUS for a while but configuring it is harder to do than just writing your own news reader.
mc for messing around with files.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
That's your problem.
:)
I've never ascended either, and I've been playing for more than 7 years now.
And your game doesn't sound very appealing to Nethack players.
Maxing stats and worrying about how much attack damage is not what Nethack is about.
And 'recalling' back to town to 'sell treasure' sounds way too much like an MMOG than Nethack.
Nethack simply isn't for you. It's not for everyone.
Anyone who stops playing Nethack for good, well, it isn't for them