Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 06, 2004 10:37 PM
Not one of the CLI defenders is suggesting that a GUI is not appropriate for certain tasks or that those people developing the GUIs should pack up shop and sign on to the Emacs project. What the CLI defenders are saying is that, in the rush to pander to Windows users, we should never forget that the CLI is indispensible on a Linux box. To hide that fact is to hide Linux's true power.
I used to answer thousands of newbie support questions at MandrakeExpert. Most of those newbies feared the command line. If I suggested they open a terminal and type a command, they'd ask me if there wasn't a GUI way to do it. Sometimes there was a way to do it in the GUI but it was just so convoluted and time consuming to try to explain "Click the K button and, under Networking, find Tool X. Now, when Tool X opens, go to the File menu up top and..." Normally, I could accomplish the same thing with a couple or three commands at the command line and the output from typing the commands told me what went wrong, if something did. In what way is this damaging to anyone? How can one duplicate the experience of telling someone who's having NIC troubles to type
<TT>insmod rtl8139too</TT>
and report back what it says? Is it not a good thing for a user to learn that this is possible?
Finally, why should any one of us care a whit if a gazillion Windows users march to Linux tomorrow? Each of us is using Linux for its benefits to us and, I suspect, the constellation of benefits to which each of us responds is slightly different. Maybe Windows is the right place for some people. Should we really have to, or try to, make the transition to Linux a seamless experience for the billions of MS droids? I don't have a problem doing that unless it means that, in the process, I have to hide or, worse, give up the CLI. If that should ever come to pass, then, yes, I object.
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Re:Command Line are cool!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 06, 2004 10:37 PMI used to answer thousands of newbie support questions at MandrakeExpert. Most of those newbies feared the command line. If I suggested they open a terminal and type a command, they'd ask me if there wasn't a GUI way to do it. Sometimes there was a way to do it in the GUI but it was just so convoluted and time consuming to try to explain "Click the K button and, under Networking, find Tool X. Now, when Tool X opens, go to the File menu up top and..." Normally, I could accomplish the same thing with a couple or three commands at the command line and the output from typing the commands told me what went wrong, if something did. In what way is this damaging to anyone? How can one duplicate the experience of telling someone who's having NIC troubles to typeand report back what it says? Is it not a good thing for a user to learn that this is possible?
Finally, why should any one of us care a whit if a gazillion Windows users march to Linux tomorrow? Each of us is using Linux for its benefits to us and, I suspect, the constellation of benefits to which each of us responds is slightly different. Maybe Windows is the right place for some people. Should we really have to, or try to, make the transition to Linux a seamless experience for the billions of MS droids? I don't have a problem doing that unless it means that, in the process, I have to hide or, worse, give up the CLI. If that should ever come to pass, then, yes, I object.
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