Because otherwise nobody would pay extra for a touch screen PC with Windows 8
Actually you are quite right and the product may be very practical for monitors or even HD TV's that don't have touch/gesture capability. The problem I have had with all touch screens is actually the finger marks left on them and for larger screen monitors cleaning becomes an annoyance. A friend of mine recently purchased a Samsung 15.6 in notebook and no surprises it came with MS Windows 8, however this notebook does not have a touch screen and using the display with a mouse IMHO is odd since the main display consists of horribly designed tiles.
I know many will disagree with my observation of MS Windows 8 but I personally like an uncluttered desktop on a large screen although I am quite happy with the IMHO nicely designed icons of the iPhone and Android machines, but tiles (again my opinion) ugh!
Agreed. I expected to see a car that flies. I figured it was another car-airplane hybrid. But no, we have 6 fans blowing downward and it's wobbly as hell. I believe the US Military did the same crap in the 1960's. Congratulations!
Yes the video does jump around however I did like the egg shaped vehicle (cute but impractical) however most of the stuff shown would never make it to the market. Still it looks like many of the people including the spectators had allot of fun.
I am afraid the concept of a flying car is still way off in the future or in Sci-Fi since you would have to have two major leaps in technology, the first being a flying car that is relatively small, manoeuvrable and economical and second you would need a county wide flight management system that would be orders of magnitude over the current flight management system for commercial and private aircraft. At the moment it is still more cheaper and practical to have a ground based transport system in all major cities of the world.
What we need is commitment from the vendor that the hardware is not Linux hostile and they won't try to avoid their warranty obligation using Linux as an excuse
Having worked for HP I knew that all their x86 (64 and 32 bit) machines could run Linux although they don't actually wave the flag about it and when I had an overheating problem there was no issue with getting the machine repaired under warranty even with Fedora on it. I actually have two HP laptops which I own, one which is about 5 years old which I use for testing and the other (HP dv7 just over two years old) which I use for personal and corporate use and both run Fedora 18 which "just works" even though Fedora is known as a development distribution.
Ah say the detractors but it does not run "Games For Windows". Well it can be made to however I never have been a PC gamer preferring console games instead although if I really felt like it I can play most web games natively. There are a few applications I cannot run on my machines one being Microsoft IE (I can in a virtual machine but why bother) and the other the popular viruses:)
Of course bit rate is important but there are other important factors to be considered as well especially since mp3 files are normally encoded for 2 or 2.1 stereo and are lossy although it is possible to get 5.1 channel mp3's (see here) which again are lossy. The problem you have with mp3's or any encoded format is the source of the sound and how it was originally recorded as well as the playback sound system including the ears and personal temperament (ie. likes) of the person who is listening.
You are always going to get people who claim that they can detect the difference between lossy audio files to lossless ones and in many cases this will be true especially if you consider 7.1, 5.1 audio compared to 2.1 audio which the majority of mp3's and mp3 playback devices support. Assuming the original sound source was of high quality then an mp3 rip will normally be acceptable especially when the play back device is of good quality and listened to via head-phones or ear buds.
The internet was turned loose to the world for a free exchange of information to improve and enhance the species and our lives.
I am not sure if that is the case. It is best to study a timeline such as here , however the most interesting thing about the Internet is that it grew before Governments could put controls on it. Even today Governments are still playing catch-up, however in democratic countries it is almost political suicide for any government to put legislation in place for tighter control of the Internet although that does not stop some politicians (you know the "Holier than thou" or "think of the Children" types) from trying.
He very clearly means what whilst desktop Linux GUIs are thrown together by anyone who wants to contribute, the Android UI is controlled by Google.
Please name a session managed window system (not just a window manager) that was actually designed by a single person. Nearly all major Unix and Linux GUI's have been designed by a single organisation and many accept contributions from individuals although actual changes are always at the precognitive of the maintainers.
You can take what Google put out there, but you can't change Google's Android UI
Basically all GUI's have a particular flavour that fundamentally cannot be changed however in the majority of cases you can customise them to varying degrees and Android is no exception. As far as fundamentals go not a huge amount has changed since Xerox first postulated a windowing interface back in the 1970's.
Android's window management policy is all maximized all the time
When displaying on any device you always need to consider the size of the screen. For small screen such as those on phones it becomes almost impossible to have two or more windows displayed however with Android you can have multiple session screens (most modern Android devices have 7 by default although that is configurable) which are accessible by a simple pinch and touch or just a slide.
On larger screens is is possible to have multiple windows on the same screen and this is the case for many OS's with GUI's however you still need to consider if you really require those side by side or overlapping windows. In some instances you do and in others you don't however that should be the choice of the user.
Personally I have always likes the Unix/Linux idea of multiple session screens (late 1980's on) on which you can display one or more windows with each of those sessions being assigned a specific task or at least tasks that have some commonality. For some the very idea of having a single session display with a single task window is very appealing and easy to get use to, however for others who are much more adventurous multi session and multiple windows (depends on screen size) are much more useful and efficient.
I think the best way to sum up here is to state that some people like what we would call "A little golden book" while others prefer access to an "Encyclopedia" however just because many people prefer something simple it is stupid (IMHO criminal) for any vendor to limit a computer to simple tasks. The "Encyclopedia" concept of Unix/Linux has always catered for people who want something simple and at the same time you have a massive amount of tools and data that is available for people willing to learn.
I would have to agree however using a scripting language in a text editor depends on what you what to do. Personally for what I normally do I actually use the:map feature of "vi" (also in "vim") which in reality is the "ex" editor which allows me to quickly map a set of "vi/vim" key-presses to a single key. In this way I can see what is going to happen and if there is a problem I can undo, edit appropriately (if applicable) and skip to the next mapped key press. By doing this I can actually edit hundreds of lines in a few minutes.
I am now running Fedora 18 and "vim" is not actually installed by default however "vi" is. Of course I could install "vim" or better yet "gvim" (graphical vim) since it is only about 20 MB however I don't do a huge amount of programming so I would not make use of the enhanced features of "vim" which IMHO are excellent.
IMHO emacs is the better editor than "vi/vim" however it may not be on all systems (by default it is not on Fedora) and anyone who is a System Admin really needs to know "vi" and possibly "ed". The learning curve for emacs is actually steeper than for vi however for those people that are willing to learn it is well worth the effort.
Even looking back on the 1980's and many different flavours of Unix and now Linux the basic "vi" commands have not changed. If you absolutely needed your keyboard cursor keys to move your screen cursor you still needed to have a decent termcap entry for your particular terminal type, however if you use "h" (left), "j" (down), "k (up)", "l" (right) it always works no matter what terminal you use. Of course knowing other keyboard presses for cursor movement such a "w" (word forward), "b" (word back) as well as "i" (insert) and "a" (append) have not changed since vi was first written. The basic keyboard commands in vi are surprisingly logical if you think about them that is why I never bothered mapping keystrokes to function keys. You can even use vi on a teletype connected to your computer in single line mode.
In the DOS days I actually used "little vi" and that fitted on a 360kB floppy disk so I had no real need to run "ed" or "edlin" although I was still proficient in "ed" since when Unix was brought down to single user mode to fix any issues you may not have access to "vi" if you could not mount the/usr file-system.
Never worry about getting multimedia, games, power management (say, hibernation), wireless drivers, etc. working on Linux ever again.
Bonus: you can probably just run Openbox or Windowmaker or something else light since you've got Windows to do most of the stuff you needed KDE/Gnome/XFCE for.
Run a good Linux distribution.
Run MS Windows 7 or XP in VirtualBox.
There fixed it for you:)
I will concede Microsoft specific OS games which I don't play anyway but everything else works.
Is your issue Fedora or KDE related? If Fedora subscribe here or if KDE related subscribe here . Personally I have not had many problems with Fedora (I have 18) and even less with KDE although I did switch to Gnome for a few months when KDE 4.0 came out.
Until you run Firefox or Synaptic that is...(ducking for cover)
Now where is that rock:)
No issues with Firefox or Google Chrome or even Konqueror on Fedora 18, however I don't use Synaptic (normally on Debian based Linux distributions) I use yum.
Um WINE is extreamly stable for MS Office, more stable then native LibreOffice in my experience.
I have been running OpenOffice and recently LibreOffice for almost 5 years now and never have had a stability problem. Of course my principle OS is Linux (Fedora to be precise) and I rarely have issues. The last time I ran Wine was about 2 years ago so I have not missed it especially since I can run MS Widows under virtualization and even then I rarely use it.
* OpenOffice/LibreOffice for Android. Far better chance of that happening (and actually working).
You have not done an app search recently have you.
A *FULL* X11 implementation for Android, bringing all (or at least many of) the Linux desktop apps over. (Again, far better chance than getting WINE working on Android with any reasonable performance or stability).
Why? There are around about half a million Android apps now that are much more useful than trying to implement X11.
* Android apps running native (or at least semi-native) under a Linux desktop
Actually many Linux apps are already available for Android. That includes LibreOffice, The GIMP, VLC, MPlayer, vi/gvim, Firefox, Google Chrome, Image and PDF viewers including games just to name a few.
If you want MS Office on your phone though this would be great (for obviouse reason MS Office is extreamly stable on Wine)
I thinks this begs the question Why?
Having what normally is a application that is more suitable to reasonably sized screen, think say 10" and above (ok I would concede 7") as well as a keyboard and mouse (or touch-pad). IMHO It would be really only bragging rights to run any Office suite (not just Microsoft Office) on a mobile phone since you would not be very productive. Of course there would be many who would point out to me that they can be very much more productive to which I would reply. "Have you or firm paid for your Microsoft License or have you joined the Green Parrot Brigade" and "Get a life".
BTW You can get LibreOffice for Android for free (no adds), it can open and write Microsoft Word documents so why bother with emulation software to install Microsoft Office when you can get a whole suite of Office software (not just LibreOffice) for Android for little if any cost..
apt-get install miredo (or just make use of dependencies to install it automatically.)
Definitely informative and yum install miredo also works although it does depend what distribution of Linux you are using. For those that don't know "miredo" is a Tunnelling client/server for IP6 over UDP through NAT's.
For a worldwide known top kernel developer to switch to ubuntu and leave development, Fedora 18 must be obscenely bad.
Sorry saying that is not very insightful since you are only going by what one person stated about Fedora 18 although admittedly Alan Cox does have allot of credibility however IMO his credibility took a nose dive after he made those statements.
The so called "problems" with Fedora 18 that Alan Cox reported on (actually "ranted" would be more appropriate) were very superficial and were debunked in previous Slashdot postings. I downloaded Fedora 18 an hour or two after it was released and updated my spare machine to operational status within 90 minutes. My other machine took 3 hours to reach a fully operational status however I have allot more software on that. Sure the installer was a WTF for the first 2 to 3 minutes then "Oh! that is how it works" then it was business as usual. I will agree that the new installer was IMHO "cosmetically challenged", but it does what it is supposed to do and it does it well.
The only issue I had with one of my machines was the brightness control in that it did nothing, however I had seen that issue in Fedora 16 and 17 so applied the appropriate commands to the Grub 2 configuration file, updated the Grub 2 menu and rebooted (all up 10 minutes).
Actually I would disagree with that. Most software I have seen and used is actually quite pretty IMO although to some the word "ugly" may be more appropriate, however pretty does not necessarily mean functional.
What is important in computing is what you want to achieve and how do you go about that in an efficient way. Using a GUI may or may not be the best way to go sometimes the so called dreaded (to some this is the case) command line is better. People who hate the command line are IMHO not willing to learn and are usually very inefficient when it comes to doing tasks that a GUI application can not do or do badly. it must be remembered a GUI can only do what the programmer intended and no more. Sure there are GUI applications that support macros or some programming language however this is not that much different than using the command line. Being comfortable with a both GUI applications and command line as well as a willingness to learn something new is actually the best and most efficient way of doing things.
And for all the scorn heaped upon GIMP, the interface for Photoshop doesn't win any prizes either, as it's got 25 years of UI cruft and should *really* be re-written from scratch.
I have only looked a Photoshop on my son's computer which is pretty but according to my son it is not that efficient, however I do use the GIMP and while to some the interface may look ugly to me the interface is extremely practical and flexible. The only thing that PhotoShop has over the GIMP is the ability to record keystrokes which IMHO would be a useful thing however there is a workaround for that by adding the appropriate keystrokes to "shortcuts and gestures". Both applications do have their own programming language however if I want to say rescale a few thousand jpg or png files I would actually use ImageMagic commands and not the GUI.
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Because otherwise nobody would pay extra for a touch screen PC with Windows 8
Actually you are quite right and the product may be very practical for monitors or even HD TV's that don't have touch/gesture capability. The problem I have had with all touch screens is actually the finger marks left on them and for larger screen monitors cleaning becomes an annoyance. A friend of mine recently purchased a Samsung 15.6 in notebook and no surprises it came with MS Windows 8, however this notebook does not have a touch screen and using the display with a mouse IMHO is odd since the main display consists of horribly designed tiles.
I know many will disagree with my observation of MS Windows 8 but I personally like an uncluttered desktop on a large screen although I am quite happy with the IMHO nicely designed icons of the iPhone and Android machines, but tiles (again my opinion) ugh!
Agreed. I expected to see a car that flies. I figured it was another car-airplane hybrid. But no, we have 6 fans blowing downward and it's wobbly as hell. I believe the US Military did the same crap in the 1960's. Congratulations!
Actually it was the British that developed the "Flying Bedstead" in 1953/4.
Yes the video does jump around however I did like the egg shaped vehicle (cute but impractical) however most of the stuff shown would never make it to the market. Still it looks like many of the people including the spectators had allot of fun.
I am afraid the concept of a flying car is still way off in the future or in Sci-Fi since you would have to have two major leaps in technology, the first being a flying car that is relatively small, manoeuvrable and economical and second you would need a county wide flight management system that would be orders of magnitude over the current flight management system for commercial and private aircraft. At the moment it is still more cheaper and practical to have a ground based transport system in all major cities of the world.
What we need is commitment from the vendor that the hardware is not Linux hostile and they won't try to avoid their warranty obligation using Linux as an excuse
Having worked for HP I knew that all their x86 (64 and 32 bit) machines could run Linux although they don't actually wave the flag about it and when I had an overheating problem there was no issue with getting the machine repaired under warranty even with Fedora on it. I actually have two HP laptops which I own, one which is about 5 years old which I use for testing and the other (HP dv7 just over two years old) which I use for personal and corporate use and both run Fedora 18 which "just works" even though Fedora is known as a development distribution.
:)
Ah say the detractors but it does not run "Games For Windows". Well it can be made to however I never have been a PC gamer preferring console games instead although if I really felt like it I can play most web games natively. There are a few applications I cannot run on my machines one being Microsoft IE (I can in a virtual machine but why bother) and the other the popular viruses
Since long range transmission is now high voltage DC that's no longer a problem.
Since when? and yes I am aware of superconductivity methods which have their own issues.
Long distance power transmission (see here) has always been AC since the Edison, Westinghouse wars (see here) over 120 years ago.
Of course bit rate is important but there are other important factors to be considered as well especially since mp3 files are normally encoded for 2 or 2.1 stereo and are lossy although it is possible to get 5.1 channel mp3's (see here) which again are lossy. The problem you have with mp3's or any encoded format is the source of the sound and how it was originally recorded as well as the playback sound system including the ears and personal temperament (ie. likes) of the person who is listening.
You are always going to get people who claim that they can detect the difference between lossy audio files to lossless ones and in many cases this will be true especially if you consider 7.1, 5.1 audio compared to 2.1 audio which the majority of mp3's and mp3 playback devices support. Assuming the original sound source was of high quality then an mp3 rip will normally be acceptable especially when the play back device is of good quality and listened to via head-phones or ear buds.
The internet was turned loose to the world for a free exchange of information to improve and enhance the species and our lives.
I am not sure if that is the case. It is best to study a timeline such as here , however the most interesting thing about the Internet is that it grew before Governments could put controls on it. Even today Governments are still playing catch-up, however in democratic countries it is almost political suicide for any government to put legislation in place for tighter control of the Internet although that does not stop some politicians (you know the "Holier than thou" or "think of the Children" types) from trying.
He very clearly means what whilst desktop Linux GUIs are thrown together by anyone who wants to contribute, the Android UI is controlled by Google.
Please name a session managed window system (not just a window manager) that was actually designed by a single person. Nearly all major Unix and Linux GUI's have been designed by a single organisation and many accept contributions from individuals although actual changes are always at the precognitive of the maintainers.
You can take what Google put out there, but you can't change Google's Android UI
Basically all GUI's have a particular flavour that fundamentally cannot be changed however in the majority of cases you can customise them to varying degrees and Android is no exception. As far as fundamentals go not a huge amount has changed since Xerox first postulated a windowing interface back in the 1970's.
Android's window management policy is all maximized all the time
When displaying on any device you always need to consider the size of the screen. For small screen such as those on phones it becomes almost impossible to have two or more windows displayed however with Android you can have multiple session screens (most modern Android devices have 7 by default although that is configurable) which are accessible by a simple pinch and touch or just a slide.
On larger screens is is possible to have multiple windows on the same screen and this is the case for many OS's with GUI's however you still need to consider if you really require those side by side or overlapping windows. In some instances you do and in others you don't however that should be the choice of the user.
Personally I have always likes the Unix/Linux idea of multiple session screens (late 1980's on) on which you can display one or more windows with each of those sessions being assigned a specific task or at least tasks that have some commonality. For some the very idea of having a single session display with a single task window is very appealing and easy to get use to, however for others who are much more adventurous multi session and multiple windows (depends on screen size) are much more useful and efficient.
I think the best way to sum up here is to state that some people like what we would call "A little golden book" while others prefer access to an "Encyclopedia" however just because many people prefer something simple it is stupid (IMHO criminal) for any vendor to limit a computer to simple tasks. The "Encyclopedia" concept of Unix/Linux has always catered for people who want something simple and at the same time you have a massive amount of tools and data that is available for people willing to learn.
Sony sold 6.3 million PS3s in Japan in total, compared to worldwide sales of 70.2 million.
If they made a Japanese-only console they'd lose over 90% of their sales.
Try 9.1 million.
Emacs scripting is better than that in vim.
I would have to agree however using a scripting language in a text editor depends on what you what to do. Personally for what I normally do I actually use the :map feature of "vi" (also in "vim") which in reality is the "ex" editor which allows me to quickly map a set of "vi/vim" key-presses to a single key. In this way I can see what is going to happen and if there is a problem I can undo, edit appropriately (if applicable) and skip to the next mapped key press. By doing this I can actually edit hundreds of lines in a few minutes.
I am now running Fedora 18 and "vim" is not actually installed by default however "vi" is. Of course I could install "vim" or better yet "gvim" (graphical vim) since it is only about 20 MB however I don't do a huge amount of programming so I would not make use of the enhanced features of "vim" which IMHO are excellent.
IMHO emacs is the better editor than "vi/vim" however it may not be on all systems (by default it is not on Fedora) and anyone who is a System Admin really needs to know "vi" and possibly "ed". The learning curve for emacs is actually steeper than for vi however for those people that are willing to learn it is well worth the effort.
Even looking back on the 1980's and many different flavours of Unix and now Linux the basic "vi" commands have not changed. If you absolutely needed your keyboard cursor keys to move your screen cursor you still needed to have a decent termcap entry for your particular terminal type, however if you use "h" (left), "j" (down), "k (up)", "l" (right) it always works no matter what terminal you use. Of course knowing other keyboard presses for cursor movement such a "w" (word forward), "b" (word back) as well as "i" (insert) and "a" (append) have not changed since vi was first written. The basic keyboard commands in vi are surprisingly logical if you think about them that is why I never bothered mapping keystrokes to function keys. You can even use vi on a teletype connected to your computer in single line mode.
/usr file-system.
In the DOS days I actually used "little vi" and that fitted on a 360kB floppy disk so I had no real need to run "ed" or "edlin" although I was still proficient in "ed" since when Unix was brought down to single user mode to fix any issues you may not have access to "vi" if you could not mount the
vi? emacs? no normal English speaker knows what these words mean. Do you need to be a cunning linguist to use these programs?
Well you could use elvis after all just about everyone knows or has heard of him. :)
Run Windows 7.
Run Linux in VirtualBox.
Never worry about getting multimedia, games, power management (say, hibernation), wireless drivers, etc. working on Linux ever again.
Bonus: you can probably just run Openbox or Windowmaker or something else light since you've got Windows to do most of the stuff you needed KDE/Gnome/XFCE for.
Run a good Linux distribution.
:)
Run MS Windows 7 or XP in VirtualBox.
There fixed it for you
I will concede Microsoft specific OS games which I don't play anyway but everything else works.
Is your issue Fedora or KDE related? If Fedora subscribe here or if KDE related subscribe here . Personally I have not had many problems with Fedora (I have 18) and even less with KDE although I did switch to Gnome for a few months when KDE 4.0 came out.
Until you run Firefox or Synaptic that is...(ducking for cover)
Now where is that rock :)
No issues with Firefox or Google Chrome or even Konqueror on Fedora 18, however I don't use Synaptic (normally on Debian based Linux distributions) I use yum.
Give us something to look at you fucking dummy. We're interested.
Sigh! Google: "KDE 4.10 Screenshots" for the more technically minded.
Um WINE is extreamly stable for MS Office, more stable then native LibreOffice in my experience.
I have been running OpenOffice and recently LibreOffice for almost 5 years now and never have had a stability problem. Of course my principle OS is Linux (Fedora to be precise) and I rarely have issues. The last time I ran Wine was about 2 years ago so I have not missed it especially since I can run MS Widows under virtualization and even then I rarely use it.
I would much rather have:
* OpenOffice/LibreOffice for Android. Far better chance of that happening (and actually working).
You have not done an app search recently have you.
A *FULL* X11 implementation for Android, bringing all (or at least many of) the Linux desktop apps over. (Again, far better chance than getting WINE working on Android with any reasonable performance or stability).
Why? There are around about half a million Android apps now that are much more useful than trying to implement X11.
* Android apps running native (or at least semi-native) under a Linux desktop
Actually many Linux apps are already available for Android. That includes LibreOffice, The GIMP, VLC, MPlayer, vi/gvim, Firefox, Google Chrome, Image and PDF viewers including games just to name a few.
If you want MS Office on your phone though this would be great (for obviouse reason MS Office is extreamly stable on Wine)
I thinks this begs the question Why?
Having what normally is a application that is more suitable to reasonably sized screen, think say 10" and above (ok I would concede 7") as well as a keyboard and mouse (or touch-pad). IMHO It would be really only bragging rights to run any Office suite (not just Microsoft Office) on a mobile phone since you would not be very productive. Of course there would be many who would point out to me that they can be very much more productive to which I would reply. "Have you or firm paid for your Microsoft License or have you joined the Green Parrot Brigade" and "Get a life".
BTW You can get LibreOffice for Android for free (no adds), it can open and write Microsoft Word documents so why bother with emulation software to install Microsoft Office when you can get a whole suite of Office software (not just LibreOffice) for Android for little if any cost..
apt-get install miredo (or just make use of dependencies to install it automatically.)
Definitely informative and yum install miredo also works although it does depend what distribution of Linux you are using. For those that don't know "miredo" is a Tunnelling client/server for IP6 over UDP through NAT's.
For a worldwide known top kernel developer to switch to ubuntu and leave development, Fedora 18 must be obscenely bad.
Sorry saying that is not very insightful since you are only going by what one person stated about Fedora 18 although admittedly Alan Cox does have allot of credibility however IMO his credibility took a nose dive after he made those statements.
The so called "problems" with Fedora 18 that Alan Cox reported on (actually "ranted" would be more appropriate) were very superficial and were debunked in previous Slashdot postings. I downloaded Fedora 18 an hour or two after it was released and updated my spare machine to operational status within 90 minutes. My other machine took 3 hours to reach a fully operational status however I have allot more software on that. Sure the installer was a WTF for the first 2 to 3 minutes then "Oh! that is how it works" then it was business as usual. I will agree that the new installer was IMHO "cosmetically challenged", but it does what it is supposed to do and it does it well.
The only issue I had with one of my machines was the brightness control in that it did nothing, however I had seen that issue in Fedora 16 and 17 so applied the appropriate commands to the Grub 2 configuration file, updated the Grub 2 menu and rebooted (all up 10 minutes).
Not a bad troll.
but 99% of commercial software is ugly as sin.
Actually I would disagree with that. Most software I have seen and used is actually quite pretty IMO although to some the word "ugly" may be more appropriate, however pretty does not necessarily mean functional.
What is important in computing is what you want to achieve and how do you go about that in an efficient way. Using a GUI may or may not be the best way to go sometimes the so called dreaded (to some this is the case) command line is better. People who hate the command line are IMHO not willing to learn and are usually very inefficient when it comes to doing tasks that a GUI application can not do or do badly. it must be remembered a GUI can only do what the programmer intended and no more. Sure there are GUI applications that support macros or some programming language however this is not that much different than using the command line. Being comfortable with a both GUI applications and command line as well as a willingness to learn something new is actually the best and most efficient way of doing things.
And for all the scorn heaped upon GIMP, the interface for Photoshop doesn't win any prizes either, as it's got 25 years of UI cruft and should *really* be re-written from scratch.
I have only looked a Photoshop on my son's computer which is pretty but according to my son it is not that efficient, however I do use the GIMP and while to some the interface may look ugly to me the interface is extremely practical and flexible. The only thing that PhotoShop has over the GIMP is the ability to record keystrokes which IMHO would be a useful thing however there is a workaround for that by adding the appropriate keystrokes to "shortcuts and gestures". Both applications do have their own programming language however if I want to say rescale a few thousand jpg or png files I would actually use ImageMagic commands and not the GUI.