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Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome?
dgharmon writes "The Command Line Interface has its uses, acknowledged Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim, but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI, he says. Keep it as an option or you can take it out all together. 'If it is there, it should just be there for the IT people or tech support to use when you encounter a problem.'"
Guy is a fucking moron. Thats all.
Mod headline -1, flamebait.
(and the summary is silly, as well—how many popular software products today actually require the end user to run terminal commands?)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
No. Fucking. Way.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Sometimes you have to have a user ping something, telnet to something. I know it sucks and it is hard, but basic connectivity tests are what you need. /Love using AppNeta's PathView so I don't have to do this much anymore. //Just need the company to get more testing equipment.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
That is all.
Article = flamebait.
No sig today...
The GUI - Making easy things easier, and hard things impossible. (Seriously, there are still a lot of command line tools like sed and awk which are absolutely invaluable, with no real non-commandline alternatives)
I think that is the key word... a rather hazy that doesn't really mean anything.
CLI isn't just for 'tech support and IT', but most users don't have much use for it. Though some people are just going to like it even if they are 'consumers', there are times where it can be a real time saver for common 'consumer' tasks. Though I do have to agree that no 'consumer' app should actually require its usage at this point.
The light-switch is one of the end-user interfaces for electricity in the house. The wiring behind it is better left to the experts. It's dangerous for the non-initiated to fiddle with it.
Same for the command line. Graphical user interfaces have become the de-facto end-user interface to modern computing devices, to information, to the Internet, etc. The CLI exposes some of the wiring behind it. No need for end users to mess with it or to have to understand it. It can be confusing for them or even dangerous.
The sooner software developers realize this, the better it is for everyone involved.
It may be sad that today's users are not introduced at the same level to the technology that many of us were decades ago, but that's the way things go. We don't expect to wire up our house ourselves, or build our own generators or electric engines. We shouldn't expect that a product for the masses should require in-depth knowledge or even expose an interface that is not really useful for every day users.
Why did this even make it to the home page? That door is so open you can't kick it in anymore.
-- Cheers!
*gets ready for mindless hate replies*
Look, I'm not against the command line. It's fine. And I actually would say that every program should have a command line. That said, every program should also have a GUI interface.
A serious problem in linux is that frequently you have to go to the command line to do a lot of things. You should NEVER have to go to command line.
The command line is great for people that have memorized all the commands, know exactly what they want to do, and can run the operations in their sleep. But for everyone else it's a hinderence. They have to do queries and check forums to figure out what the program is called. Then they need to look up the syntax.
It's the opposite of user friendly.
Command line is great for certain things. I Scripting especially is much easier if everything can take a command line. I wish more programs in windows for example could take a command line.
But linux especially needs to offer the GUI as the primary interface for EVERYTHING.
I know the old linux hands disagree. This is why you have adoption problems. And because you have adoption problems many companies don't write software for your OS requiring the open source community to write everything themselves. And of course hardware venders frequently don't release drivers for your OS. Fix the GUI issue and all that will change.
Quid pro quo. We're not asking for the universe here. Just the GUI as the primary interface. Keep the command line for those that prefer it. But you'll never get the adoption up so long as its the secondary interface.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I invoke Betteridge's Law of Headlines here.
No.
And if it wasn't available we would find a way to install it.
Next topic.
CLI is for writing code...?
What happens in your GUI when you have a folder with 10,000 files in it? What if you want to do something with all those files? Are you going to do it one click at a time?
No sig today...
"... but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI, he says."
"... but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via soldiering iron, he says."
"... but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via distillation, he says."
"... but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via (fill in the blank), he says."
Now ask yourself what percentage of home users have ever used the command line on their phones. Or have opened up a device to re-soldier parts of it. And when was the LAST time something like that needed to be done.
Troll article is trolling. Nothing to see here.
Have you ever had automated something? This happens even in the consumer world and where the command-line comes in ;-).
Probably reacting to a flamebait i shouldn't reply to....
"Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim"
Well I'd assume raptors would be mobile, but I still have no idea why a dinosaur would be blogging, let alone why anyone would care what they thought about CLI vs anything else?
...when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Dipshit...
"Just the simple task of separating two kinds of files from a single directory, 'mkdir GIF;mkdir JPG;mv *.gif ./GIF;mv *.jpg ./JPG' and I'm done -- five seconds to accomplish that. How long would it take in a pretty looking GUI?"
Create two directories; sort by file type; drag & drop * 2... done. And it'll deal with mixed case extensions. Don't get me started about Mr. "You can't do that FTP transfer in less than 8 mouse clicks". vs 32 keystrokes. I'm not sure where his maths comes from.
They also don't go into how far you are away from destroying the world with a CLI:
sudo rm -Rf ~/bin
is one keystroke from
sudo rm -Rf ~ /bin
Or just the simple case of "cp a b c/", only you eagerly hit enter before "c/" so you blow away b with no checks.
And who knows what you get when your super awesome smart shell loop isn't escaped properly on a filename with a space, quotes or apostrophe in the name.
GUI or CLI -- do whatever you like -- but don't base your choice on the "quality" of information from the types of people in this article.
CLI is the defacto interface for Google searches. People use it everyday and all day long. Nobody complains that it isn't intuitive.
Typing in a few keywords is not CLI. That's just data input in response to a prompt.
Using the more complex search modifiers does make it more like CLI use as you are driving behavior - but most people do not do that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The *menu* has mainly outstayed its welcome. For helping a lot of non-geeks with computers, I'm amazed at how they get lost in menus, and are fearful of trying stuff out. I think most apps should just propose templates to be filled, use very loud and simple screen for configuration (à la Palm), and maybe just one menu for "More..." like Android currently does.
I know there are experts out there, who like menus, keyboard shortcuts, and CLIs (I do). But most people just can't handle them.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I would have agreed with all the flamebait posts, except that the Plex Media Center team, which makes an otherwise super-user-friendly front end and back end for managing their media center, requires the use of a CLI for even basic operations like updating the library.
I will give up the command line when you pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers. Still, I would prefer that consumer software not require its use for common, or even uncommon but simple, tasks.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's the whole point. What percentage of the light switches currently in use are NOT operated by some kind of switch?
He's advocating for something that has been solved and implemented years ago.
Yep. So he's advocating that what has already happened ... happen? How many people have used the command line on their smart phones? Already solved. Already implemented. No need to claim that it SHOULD be done.
They have realized it. They have implemented it. It is already done.
Again, already realized, designed, implemented, shipped and sold.
Been there. Done that. Ten years ago.
Damn it, this really bothers me. I'm usually very careful to check my theories and hunches before I post a comment, but I really messed that one up. Now instead of modding me down, like I asked, people are modding it up. Apologies to Roberto Lim and Robin Miller, and anybody who read what I wrote but missed the AC's correction.
I want to blame the Euro soccer finals and copious amounts of alcohol, but I should know better than to drink and post.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Gnome has a registry. Fucking idiots.
You didn't look at Gnome recently, did you?
Rethinking email
Come on, Gnome is written by a guy with a hard on for Bill Gates, what do you expect? Which part of Windows did they not try to implement? .Net, mono, .asp and other weirdass shit.
He did say he would love to work for Microsoft.
Since they wouldn't hire him, he is doing his best to turn Linux into Windows.
You don't write code in a CLI. You just happen to use the same terminal emulator that hosts your CLI to host a text editor and IDE, and that's only in the worst-case scenario where you are too much a troglodyte to even use gvim (let alone a modern IDE.)
A command line is great for lots of things. Writing code isn't one of those things.
But I must give to them that they try to look Unlike Windows really hard. Breaking ages old GUI behaviors and leaving the users bewildered and frustrated just for the reason of "because we're not Windows".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
To be fair, Microsoft is doing the same shit these days. Consistent Windows User Experience Guidelines? No, fuck you, you get ribbons and no start menu you douche, so pay me already.
What are you talking about? Unless you use ksplice(most don't) you still have to reboot your machine to get the latest and greatest kernel. Now you can *INSTALL* kernel updates without rebooting, but you will continue to run the old kernel until you do so.
Monstar L
Funny how yesterday's bloated crap becomes today's lean and fast. I still can't stomach Enlightenment, though.
Lets not forget who dominates the computer scene; computer nerds.
No. Really 1000 times no. The nerds make up a very tiny minority of the computer users. The dominating force in the computer scene are people who spend all day playing on Facebook, the people who actually welcome the Ribbon Bar because it's more "user friendly".
You've made one key mistake, .... or you're just seeking job security, I don't know.... The goal of software should be that WE DON'T NEED to set up a CLI script to run grandma through a list of options. If grandma can't use her computer the way she wants without my help then the designer of the software has failed.
In another reply to me someone compared the use of awk and sed to entering functions in Excel. My reply then makes a good example here too. awk and sed will be ready for the consumer when a window pops up giving the user a searchable list of software functions, guides the user through entering the arguments with extensive help, and when you balls it up fixes the function for you.
A consumer should NEVER need to access a CLI. If they do then the software developer has failed, or they are a power user like most of the Slashdot posters here who like yourself are getting very defensive at the prospect that computers should be usable by untrained monkeys.
Just the other day a Linux distro decided that they want to do away with "Upgrade Kernel Without Reboot" feature of Linux
Which distro is that?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
please remind us where the word 'prompt' comes from... the 'bash prompt' or 'shell prompt'.
you type 'key words' into it and get responses.
why does it work? because its an anlogue of verbal communication. .. which humans have been doing for 10,000+ years.
as opposed to 'poking square things that look like candy' which humans have been doing for 20 years.
Considering one of the focus areas of recent MS endeavours is to provide a richer baked-in shell (powershell), OSX has the same CLI credentials as the rest of the *nix world, it's silly at this point to say CLI is dead or dying.
I understand the sentiment that nothing should 'require' a GUI, but that's actually a pretty poor sentiment that can lead to an atrocious GUI experience. What you want is a clean GUI that enables what most of your users have to cope with. The CLI in a sense is freeing for the GUI developers. If you have advanced capability that is rarely going to be used by a small portion of the population, you can make it CLI only and keep the GUI clean. Similarly, there are some things the CLI just inherently does better, and any attempts to cater to some of those use cases in GUI is similarly going to ruin the GUI for the things that it currently does well.
I have dealt with software that held the philosophy of 'must provide all function and do it via GUI because CLI is dead'. The GUI had a labyrinth of menus and UI elements. Any attempt to do the most simple tasks prompted a 'wizard', to cover the 'well, 99% of the time, what you wanted to do was obvious, but to cover the corner cases, we are going to force you down a wizard that wants to make sure you want to do it now instead of later, when later you might want to do it, do you want to repeatedly do this same thing, while you are here, are there other things you want me to do this for, occasionally it might make sense for this to be combined with another usually unrelated task, do you want to do that this time? The data that will be processed, would you like the data exported for consumption elsewhere or thrown away?'. While it may be argued this particular piece of software was poorly designed and maybe it could've been done better, if you are trying to cater to all those scenarios trying to be *competitive* with a CLI strategy there aren't a lot of ways really to do that...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
since 99.9% of users will not have the permissions to start up an access database, and the "IT crew" will be too busy / underfunded to help them, they will revert to sharing Excel files on sharepoint.
furthermore, since the vast majority of people in these corporations have never been trained in database stuff, and the company will not pay to train them, excel is something that is essentially something 'anyone can use' the basic features of and still kind of understand whats happening without much training.
"These days"? Get real, Microsoft has NEVER had a consistent user interface across their applications.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Hello,
One thing I haven't seen mentioned about this particular mole hill is that it was uttered by someone who runs a blog dedicated to small form-factor devices like smart phones and tablets.
Given that typing anything of length on such devices is painful, it is unsurprising that he is denigrating the command line interface. It simply doesn't fit in his worldview.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
"Microsoft has NEVER had a consistent user interface across their applications."
You're forgetting the days of the "Blue Screen of Death." That was pretty consistent.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
When you sudo it from from my cold, dead hands.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I would say from the release of Windows 95 to the release of Office 2007, they were pretty much within their own standard style guidelines for GUI more or less across the board. That would be 12 years, which is a fairly significant amount of time in the computing world.
Actually the GUI-fication of Windows Server was one of the many reasons Windows based networks are so insecure and poorly configured. It creates this notion that any "kid" can configure a Windows Active Directory Domain, and small to medium sized (and sometimes larger) companies hired amateurs to save a buck. I met some pretty bad sysadmins in the last 20 years of my life, who left a horrible mess wherever they lay their hands.
Not to mention that the GUI kept changing every year, because that's just how Microsoft does stuff; anything you learn becomes obsolete a year later. They are very volatile like that. This is not so in the Unix world, where API's and tools are kept minimalistic, are cleverly crafted, slowly improved upon, with stable releases coming out every few years instead of betas coming out every month. Indeed, history shows that a Unix person retains his knowledge for decades. Show me one Windows person who can say that what he learned about Windows 2000 Server is still useful?
Enough with the Microsoft Bashing, here's one product I actually liked that took the CLI forward: Splunk. They took the CLI and put it in a Web browser! Splunk is basically a data collection tool that pipes everything through whatever you type into the web based "CLI" prompt, with the basic function being a combination of "grep", sed, awk, with powerful regular expressions, etc.
The beauty of it is that you can take your piped processes, and save them as a "View", and you can even create charts based on the resulting data. The result is a Unix admin's dream dashboard into the depths of his IT environment. I seriously recommend any Unix head look into that technology, especially considering the product has a free version (the free edition removes some "enterprise" features, but for many applications you won't miss those features at all).
I also like the combined approach: UI tools that produce either scripts or configuration files that you can read and understand and modify manually if you wish. Make a change in the configuration file? It will register in the UI. Made a change through the UI? It will register in the files and scripts. You get the best of both worlds this way.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Subject: Fucking moron journalist. And guy is a she.
Try to start your comment in the comment section. The subject line is for subjects. You're badly, sadly wrong, because the GP was referring to Roberto Lim, the blogger who is quoted by Katherine Noyes in this particular episode of her Linux Blog Safari. Hilariously, pretty much every point raised in this slashdot discussion has already been raised in the fine article, which suggests that it's not very fluffy at all. Perhaps you're just jealous that she built a bullpen of bloggers she can query and get publicity as a result before you did. I also note that you didn't cherry pick a little bit, you cherry picked a hell of a lot. The majority of Linux Blog Safari articles are on current events. I know, because I usually contribute to them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have never ever had my package database implode on an apt-based system. Indeed, I haven't had my package database explode since Redhat 6. WTF are you doing to your poor systems?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I still can't stomach Enlightenment, though.
Can you please kindly elucidate the reason you _still_ can't stomach Enlightenment?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'd KILL for an official Control Panel option in Windows to allow me to customize the BSOD screen. Power Ranger Pink anyone?
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
How are the package manager databases a crippling problem with most distros? ./configure, make, make install. The old ways are still there!
With Debian;
A. If one repository goes down I can switch to another, quite easily in fact.
B. If all repos go down for some reason I can still install via
Yes, but words are something that we are very good at.
If a GUI were made complex enough to be as flexible as the commandline, then people would have to remember just as many GUI options as commandline options.
But there's a difference. Humans are pre-wired to remember tens to hundreds of thousands of words trivially, without thinking. In contrast, we're not wired at all to remember many spatial locations, which is why complex GUIs are an utter nightmare to us.
CLIs match our brain and memory capabilities perfectly, at least when readable words are used as option names. Those who want to do away with the commandline don't realize that they're asking for it to be replaced by something that would be far, far worse.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Come on, Gnome is written by a guy with a hard on for Bill Gates, what do you expect? Which part of Windows did they not try to implement? .Net, mono, .asp and other weirdass shit.
He did say he would love to work for Microsoft.
Since they wouldn't hire him, he is doing his best to turn Linux into Windows.
It would appear that KDE is as well. Perhaps without the Bill Gates gloryhole type comments, but look at what they've done to KDE...
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Believing that any linguistically rich environment for interaction between people and computers will be commercially unpopular, the designers of operating systems want u s to live in an infant's world. They show you pretty pictures, and in order to communicate you point at the appropriate picture and grunt.
The most important accomplishment of humanity is language, it is the single most important invention. Without language we would not have culture or technology. But here we are, trying to eliminate language from computer and replacing it with hieroglyphs and symbols.
The only problem with the CLI is the illiteracy fostered by Windows and the still prevailing inconvenience of the DOS like command prompt. Some people think that if there is no GUI for a problem, there is no solution at all. Most people do not even know that you can actually tell a computer what to do instead of clicking on abstract symbols. We humans tell other humans all the time what to do. We left runes and hieroglyphs and symbols millenia ego, but if you tell people you can actually tell a computer what to do they will not known what you mean.
What is so difficult to tell the computer to "find . MyFile" or "whereis firefox" or to "reboot", or to print the current "date"? Or to "sleep 5m && reboot"? or to "wget http://some.server/some.file && poweroff"?
If you tell me, you have to remember the commands, then I have news for you: humans are very good in remember commands (aka words). We remember at least 10,000 words for everyday usage and if you speak multiple languages, that number can go pretty high. So why do you think the CLI is only for "geeks" and a regular user should not use the CLI at all? Is it because you think of "regular" users are stupid and can't learn anything? I watched flight travel agents and McDonalds workers use the CLI all the time. Or is it more that the dominant operating system on desktops have a horrible command line interface?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Fedora wants to introduce offline updates. You need to reboot to apply updates. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/06/21/2218226/fedora-introduces-offline-updates
there are things CLI is much more efficient at, and others that a GUI is better for. For the moment, an operating system isn't complete without competent implementations of both. both have binds to the physical realities of user input.. until those change, we'll need both.
another M$-Windows-like kludge?
Last I checked MS is pushing Server Core (aka GUI-less server install) and powershell everything.
You were saying?
PS: the registry isnt a bad idea, it just has a lot of cruft. Most anti-registry sentiment is based on ignorance.
Maybe thats because the Windows desktop environment tends to be far superior for the end user than the Linux one. Does linux have better updates backend, better patching philosophy, better boot options? Sure, but thats all irrelevant, and if you doubt that the Windows desktop experience is superior you simply dont work with enough normal human beings.
Queue about 50 responses about how X distro with Y desktop environment and Z window manager is superior, but all with curiously absent explainations for how your average joe is going to set that up, much less get support for it when something inevitably doesnt work that they need. Good luck going to the ubuntuforums and starting with "I ripped out Gnome for lxde, and replaced grub with extlinux....."
I spent several years with Ubuntu as a primary distro, and it was both a lot of fun and a great learning experience, but most of that experience came from things like upgrading to 7.04 and spending several days trying to iron out why sound no longer works, or figuring out why Ventrilo wont cooperate with Wine and push-to-talk. The thing is, Im not really your average user and most people arent gonna want to spend days futzing with kernel driver blacklists or compatibility layers. The honest to goodness truth is that with just about ANY problem you could find on a Windows desktop, I could google it and find a technet article, a MS KB, and a ton of forum and experts-exchange answers on it. The same simply isnt true for Linux, and thats partly because of its fragmentation and marketshare.
Linux is great for systems that will be managed by folks who do Linux, and its great when those folks can set up a locked down system for someone else. But as an every day replacement for Windows, to be managed and run by average Joe? Yea, not quite yet.
Just the other day a Linux distro decided that they want to do away with "Upgrade Kernel Without Reboot" feature of Linux
Now this guy wants to do away with CLI
Just what do they want to turn Linux into - another M$-Windows-like kludge?
While they are at it, why don't they import the "Windows registry feature" into Linux, and/or turn Linux into a proprietary closed-sourced OS??
Why can't they just leave Linux alone?
Well... given that I reboot about as often as I get laid, this should increase the number of times I get laid in a year. Where do I sign up?
You didn't look at Gnome recently, did you?
I'd rather one good common way of doing the same thing rather then 4000 different ways of doing the same thing.
The Windows binary registry is actually kind of awesome if you debug and understand how it is used. Each configuration parameter can have permissions. Each read and write to the registry can be easily audited/logged. You can use group policy to enforce permissions on registry keys or set them to certain values. Almost every app uses it, allowing you to enforce policy/set configurations across all your devices centrally. To do the same in *nix, you need to know the configuration paths of all your apps, their compile options, and some method of deploying coniguration changes to them (easier to release your own custom packages for your entire environment)
Wouldn't a proc-fs interface to similar system be awesome?!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Linux is great for systems that will be managed by folks who do Linux, and its great when those folks can set up a locked down system for someone else. But as an every day replacement for Windows, to be managed and run by average Joe? Yea, not quite yet.
Not even Windows can be adequately managed by Joe and Jane Average. You need a minimal level of understanding in order to keep any system running - not even talking about keeping it safe. I even get silly questions from the Mac users...
Nah, the real problem with Linux is the same thing it's been for years - lack of critical applications. Sure, these days, any web-based applications will work like a charm... but it's things crucial to your business - in my case AutoCAD, MasterCAM and our Infor ERP system - that prevent Linux on anything but the most basic of machines.
Once those apps get ported to Linux, I think we'd be running it within a couple of years, simply due to the lack of cost and stability(and excellent support for out-of-date hardware).
Users, well, they'll learn whatever it takes to get the job done. CLI is great for some things, horrible for others. GUI is great for some, horrible for others. It shouldn't be one or the other - blend the two. Have a good gui with common options, and a CLI box that can be pulled up for access to the complex and arcane extra features(which perhaps only 100 people in the world use, but for them it's critical).
You mean Windows' mess of deeply nested and illogical configuration options and wizards? Its haphazard collection of inconsistent user interface elements? The way it randomly and inconsistently remaps the file system hierarchy in the user interface? The way plugging in any new piece of hardware starts a hardware installation wizard that hardly ever seems to work and then causes people to go hunting for some CD or driver on the net? The way you need to reinstall Windows every now and then because it mysteriously slows down or bits and pieces of it stop working?
No, I don't think the Windows desktop environment is "superior" for anybody, not experienced users and not novices.
Look, I agree with your assessment but I feel you're inviting trouble by posting such a comment on Slashdot. You run the risk of people posting retorts, using Ubuntu as an example of a workable alternative, mentioning "grandma" every so often, etc. I don't bother trying to debate the merits of operating systems on Slashdot anymore - as far as most people are concerned Linux rules all, despite the fact most people disagree (but hey, apparently it's because they don't' know any better. Well it didn't stop Firefox and Chrome from gaining market share with the unwashed masses, so maybe it's more than just that...")
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Almost as good as a Control Panel option: add this to your system.ini
MessageBackColor=D
MessageTextColor=C
That should give you bright red on bright magenta, which is as close as you get to Power Ranger status.
I'd KILL for an official Control Panel option in Windows to allow me to customize the BSOD screen. Power Ranger Pink anyone?
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/01/11/3379158.aspx
The "Notmyfault" link.
Hey, if only it was so easy on linux, just download an installer, run it and viola! It works!
In my dreams. I'm a Linux fanboy but I do feel sad when my sound goes numb and I have to navigate a minefield of my-special-sound-daemon (un)interacting with other-guys-magical-sound-server using TLA ridden bits and bobs everywhere and my only help being totally incomprehensible forum posts here and there, all of which assume I have a Phd in sound server internals.
"Oh! Of course, what a noob I am! All I had to do was compile a custom kernel module, find the tla.conf file, enable undocumented feature Y, blacklist all the other drivers, and I'm good to go! What a noob, if _only_ windows was this easy!"
Hey, you wanna talk about inconsistency, go look at the plethora of different ways there are to get something as basic as SOUND working on linux. Funnily enough, on the same hardware, dual-boot a windows PC and stand in awe of how it just works. At worst, all I need do is download those evil drivers you speak of and run the installer.
This doesn't make me angry, or long for windows, but be realistic.
> no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
You can easily find out which files are being opened on any Unix variant by watching for an open system call. All other file descriptors are irrelevant, and this is akin of trapping registry access; permissions are granted by the filesystem, so no problem here either.
There is absolutely no advantage to the registry, but there are several disadvantages: it's harder to access and repair than a filesystem, you can't fix broken configurations with a text editor, and the process of backing up or deleting settings can be complex.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The fact that businesses have stuck with MS over the past twenty some odd years indicates that your opinion does not represent the majority. Your points indicate that Windows is not the IDEAL desktop environment for any users but compared to the other offerings on the market it is, that is it is the dominate OS used in the world. You can argue all you want about how this that or the other thing is more "superior" but that is subjective. We have pretty much only one measure of what most people think is superior and that is market share and MS wins on that front.
All that being said I left windows for Linux, then was forced back to Windows, then went to OS X. I spend far less time trying to fix problems that randomly appear on OS X than I have on any other OS. That may very well be because I don't try the offerings every few years. But at the end of the day if you can't be bothered to change your OS because of the annoyances it comes with then it works for you and what one knows is almost always "superior" to a steep learning curve.
Just to add to your pointless anecdotal evidence, I dual-booted my old laptop (long since dead). Ubuntu too about 20 minutes to get installed, configured and FULL running (including my network printer). It took me a WEEK to get all the drivers for Windows. It turns out Windows didn't like my sound card, network card.
The REASON I reinstall windows was because I had to enable AHCI in my BIOS to be able to hot-swap my e-sata port. Do you want to hear the REALLY stupid part? It turns out that Windows XP will not boot off of sata if it doesn't have the sata driver (understandable), but that it also will not let you install the sata drivers unless you have sata (which Windows believes is true when AHCI is disabled). The only way to get it to work was to reinstall with an SP3 slipstream version.
Ya know, when I hear Linux guys bitch about the reg i just have to LMAO, because frankly you have NOTHING that comes close to the ease of use of the reg. I have a customer with a problem? I can just email them a .reg file and tell them "clicky clicky and reboot" and voila! Problem solved. And I can do that with 1 machine or a thousand just as easily.
In the end all the bitching and whining about how much worse Windows is, yet your free OS couldn't even beat Vista, the most hated OS MSFT put out since WinME, what does that tell you? Hell more people pirate Windows than take your OS for free, doesn't that tell you that you are doing something wrong?
CLI is a server tech that deserves to stay in the server room and NOT on the desktop. the world has spoken, since Win 3.x CLI based OSes have gone exactly nowhere and after 20 years that is where Linux is, why? Because at the heart of the matter CLI has become a crutch, that's why. Have a problem? Bash. Can't make a GUI to save your life? Bash. Problem with sound, video, networking? Bash.
If you think your OS is so superior step right up and take the hairyfeet challenge. Simply remove CLI from your OS for 1 YEAR, that's all. Personally I doubt you'll even get it to boot, much less make even the 6 month mark, simply because CLI has become the all purpose crutch in Linux. Don't believe me, go ask for help with a common problem like say WiFi issues in ANY Linux forum and tell them you need a non CLI solution, I dare you. You'll will get cursed and insulted because in reality THEY CAN'T DO IT WITHOUT CLI.
So when you get to even 15% then you can jump on that high horse, but right now acting elitist about an OS that has barely beaten JavaME after being given away free for 20 years? that's just sad dude, and not something to be acting all elitist over.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
poke at the "download" item in the "file" menu
I personally type much faster than I mouse, so I also prefer command lines for productivity reasons.
Same here, I first bought a PC as a Wordprocessor
"There is such a desire by the elites to make personal computers just a shopping interface." - brilliantly put.
You're forgetting the days of the "Blue Screen of Death." That was pretty consistent.
Hey, you speak like that was in the past. This weekend I installed a (legal, purchased, licensed) copy of Windows 7 Home Premium onto my new machine so I could run games. I installed six games. None of them would run, and of those three failed with blue screens of death: Oblivion, Settlers IV, and Alpha Centauri. What makes that a particularly sour experience is that Oblivion, at least (haven't tried the other two), runs pretty well under WINE (some minor graphics problems, but it's playable).
Apart from that, Windows 7 cannot access the Internet, although Linux running on the same machine can, and although in Windows it can access the rest of my local network and the rest of my local network can access it. Because it can't access the Internet, my newer games won't run. Microsoft's support pages say the most likely reason is that my router is too old to support the modern wizz-bang networking of Windows 7, and they provide an online tool to test your router... but guess what, it only works with Internet Explorer, so if you need it you definitely can't use it, and if you can use it you definitely don't need it.
That's the level of thoughtfulness and quality I've come to expect from Microsoft.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Don't just point the finger at Windows. OSX is just as bad in places. Case in point - when my Mac was delivered, I was away on business, and my g/f set it up. I wasn't happy with the account name she chose for the administrative user. Expecting to need to do little more than /etc/passwd /etc/passwd was no longer where login names were managed. I asked several very smart guys who were seen as Mac gurus (perhaps only by themselves and other Mac users). They had no quick solution. They asked the people they considered gurus. They had no quick solution. Weeks later, we come to the conclusion that the only solution was this (the "For Mac OS X v10.4.11 and earlier" section):
# sed -i -e 's/admin/toor/g'
I was shocked to find that
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428?viewlocale=en_US
43 fucking steps! That's insanity.
So clearly OSX does not have the Unix philosophy. I was informed that part of the problems were because of the underlying BSD, so not actually of Apple's creation. If that's so, then even Unix ain't so Unix-like any more.
There's at least a happy ending to the story - I'm happily running Debian linux/powerpc in the box now.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Lim is using a fallacious argument known as argumentum ex silentio, or appeal to ignorance: Lim is unaware or ignorant of the reasons for a command line to exist, therefore, command line has no reason to exist. Here's another example of the appeal to ignorance fallacy:
Using a lawyer evokes a sense of pride, so I expect to get flamed by the members of your bar, but I have to admit, I usually wind up following instructions from an attorney without fully understanding their import. Lawyers don't make any sense to me, so lawyers are unnecessary.
Here hairyfeet is employing half truths or suppressed evidence --a statement intended to deceive that conveniently omits the facts necessary for an accurate description.
Here hairyfeet cleverly combines half truths with observational selection, which is similar to confirmation bias, as he points out unfavorable circumstances while ignoring the favorable.
Spectacularly, hairyfeet ends his nonsensical rant with a blatant non sequitur, as his wildly inaccurate conclusion does not follow from any legitimate established premises, nor even his own prejudicial opinion. Hairyfeet's reasoning is flawed beginning to end. Apparently, in hairyfeet's world, computer servers are not what they are because they serve the requests of client computers or programs, but they are servers because the type of their human interface is not used for anything often. Let me see if I can construct a similar example of hairyfeet's flawed argument:
There are only TWO reasons to write a blog -- boredom and conceit -- and how many readers or editors require writing blogs or repeating the same editorial constantly? That would be pretty much none, which is why I say as long as a blog is the dominant way to do anything on a webpage, it is a bad habit indicative of narcissistic compulsion and neither a legitimate profession nor a constructive use of free time.
The Admin and the Engineer
Assuming you have a good idea of WHAT to export. That is really the issue.
Most apps are not even remotely well behaved and shove junk into all sorts of places in the registry. If they stayed in one place it would be easy to export and import, but that is rarely the case :(
The CLI is the only thing that either stays the same (99,9% of the time) or very gradually improves. The Unix CLI is the only thing that doesn't become outdated. The majority of commands I used in 1995 are still the exact same today, 17 years later and in 20 years they will still be the same. I will use the very same commands and still be able to utilize the very most up-to-date computing power with those very same commands.
With grafical UIs we can't even count on the CUAS being upheld throughout desktop enviroments. And just now touch UIs of various sizes and usage patterns have entered the fray. Some of them even riddled with patents.
The *nix CLI will stay the same for a very long time, just as the bizar QWERTZ KB Layout will probably stay the same. Allthough I'd say with the CLI there are way more practical reasons for this. Take away a powerfull *nix CLI from a system and experts will abandon it. It's that simple.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
(As an example), I am still cursing mozilla and other new web browsers for the way they are keeping their UIs in a constant state of flux. Things like moving the home icon, making the status bar something that only appears if you hover over a link for 2 seconds, and just making everything look different from what it was 2 years ago. That sucks when you have to provide tech support for idiots who don't know if they're using netscape navigator or Internet Explorer 9.
And in Linux, I have found that there are plenty of GUI tools that I never bothered to learn, specifically because the Redhat version is different from the Debian version, and possibly the newer Redhat version is different from the older Redhat version.
So, yes, keep the G-d damned command-line in every version of every operating system, because I want to spend my study time learning new things, not just learning how to do the same old things in different versions of Windows/Linux.
And, no, I'm not going to make the argument for CLI reliability (that it never mangles your settings in such a way that you have to try again), or flexibility (that it's the only decent way to do scripting). Others have done a much better job than I could, in that area.
I use the command line to save time.
Example, to transfer FSMO roles there are three places in the GUI that you have to go to vs via the command line I can easily execute the command to transfer roles and after every command I get the response to verify it successfully completed.
Another example, I have a PowerShell script and a batch script to install windows hotfixes on standalone non-internet connected machines in the field. I can install 100+ hotfixes onto a new station in 20 mins or so. Also the script queries the system for installed hotfixes and skips them if they are already installed which equates into a major time savings. Try doing that via the GUI and see how far you would get w/o accidently rebooting or just giving up cause it takes so long.
Man, how does The Onion continue to deliver such great comedy after all these years?
"...specifically, whether [the command line has] outlived its usefulness in this era of the GUI"
Great stuff! I am still laughing.
The number of developers I'm meeting who are not comfortable on the CLI and opt for more obtuse ( not esoteric and hard to get into, but obtuse when it's time to understand what just broke ) IDE's, I'm obliged to pour fire on anything short of mind-machine interfaces to replace the CLI.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
As far as I know, no one is disputing that the command line is a useful interface for many administrative and scripting functions. But these are not things that most users are going to be doing.
The important part is this: "no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI". If you require a command line, then you must accept that a majority of regular users aren't going to put up with it. Fundamentally, this is aimed at Linux: as long as a substantial number of operations require dropping down to the command line (and Linux fans defend this state of affairs), then Linux on the desktop will never be a mainstream reality.
You can do important stuff from the command line on Windows - IIS log queries with LogParser and batch image editing with ImageMagick are some of the reasons I've used this in just the past couple of days. But the average Windows user never needs to see or touch it. This is why Windows is a mainstream desktop OS and Linux is not.
The real benefit of cli over other tools for me is in the troubleshooting of issues.
Think of it this way, to have an interface means to put several processes between you and the system or service performing the function you need. Using CLI gives you that extra edge of not having a filter on your product. The filter is great for day to day use and for people who do not find comfort in remembering 49,000 text based options. When you hit enter on a CLI it does something, when you hit enter on an interface other than CLI, you have to wait for two to three (or more) other services to function properly and do something. These days, nothing requires CLI on the consumer side. If your work load is greatly reduced by the use of CLI in setting up, support, monitor, or any other and you don't want to be hampered by the behind the scene actions of a GUI then stick with CLI. It all comes down to CLI in the end.
Hesperant
Come on, Gnome is written by a guy with a hard on for Bill Gates, what do you expect? Which part of Windows did they not try to implement?
It would appear that KDE is as well.
Well, what would you expect after all these years of people asking when various unix/POSIX/linux systems will take over the "desktop"? This is and always has been code for out-competing Microsoft, and most people interpret it as requiring that we mimic Windows exactly. This has always been infeasible, of course, because MS (and their sponsor IBM) has always had a marketing budget greater than all their competitors combined. And to MS customers, why would you buy a cheap knock-off of MS Windows, when for a few bucks more, you can get the Real Thing? If they are indistinguishable to the customers, this is really all you need to know. And you can't mimic them successfully anyway, because MS Windows changes significantly with every major release. To succeed, you'd have to write a system that mimics whatever Windows system the user came from. This would be a major AI project, and simply isn't feasible.
There have always been two "computer" markets that have relatively little overlap. There's the IBM/MS axis, which has always sold to people with no knowledge of computers, and no interest in the geeky internal stuff. Managers, business people, and eventually the masses who just want "a computer" and have no interest in distinguishing them. And there's the tech community, which wants to understand their tools, and has always supported a flock of smaller companies, each of which provides computers that are especially good at some things, and which are fairly "open" to customers who want to know about the internals, write their own software, etc.
You'd think the linux crowd would have learned by now that they can't win by mimicing the Big Guys. If you get too good at mimicing MS, they squash you by buying you out or (if you won't sell) bankrupting you in court. But there's a lot of money to be made by building technically good stuff and selling it to the people who understand the difference.
This topic is a clear example of this lack of understanding. It doesn't take any deep study to know that there are some things that a GUI does well, and other things that a CLI does well. In the tech market, you'd better have both of them, else your stuff will lose out to your competitors that have better tools. This isn't changing. I'm actually typing this on a Macbook Pro, and of the 10 windows visible on the (1920x1200) screen, only two have any images at all. This FF window has icons in the nav toolbar, and the adjacent Safari window has a google result page with a few similar icons. All the rest is text (some of which is in French, Italian or Chinese ;-). What I'm doing in those windows can't be done (reasonably or at all) with GUI tools. My wife has an iPad, but I don't, because a few tests showed that most of the things I want to do can't be done easily there.
So, yes, the CLI may be going away -- on "computers" that really are just appliances for email, browsing, facebook, etc. If that's where you want to do business (and will lose out to MS and Apple), sure, build a system with only GUI tools. But as someone who wants a real "computer" that I can use as a general info-processing tool, the absence of good CLI tools is a useful way of excluding systems from my list of prospective purchases. In the "tech" part of the computer market, the Command Line isn't going away, because there are too many useful tasks for which it's the best tool.
What would be really useful is a design that makes it easier to combine the CLI and GUI approaches. Currently, combining them is difficult and clumsy. Rather than saying that one should go away, the real win would be coming up with good bridges across the chasms between them.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The windows binary registry is a poorly thought out single point of failure with not nearly enough consideration given to basic disaster recovery. It's a database implemented by people with no clue about databases.
"if you debug and understand how it is used"
In other words: It's great if you drink the kool-aid.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.