Command Line Cachet?

[bigpaws]

Speaking of security - I don't understand why it is such a big deal.  Yes, I do like the idea of limiting what less knowledgeable users can see and do.

Maybe I can enlighten you. This response is not meant as flame so I hope that it does not
get interpreted as such.

Your thoughts on security, at least my interpretation is that you believe the problem to be
other users looking at others files and such. Security in the basis of a Unix or Unix type
environment are to seperate the user from the system. The reason is far more than just
be able to see others files. Any time a system setting in changed it can affect alot of people.
If you were to just enable bind and then change a setting or two you can affect hundreds to
thousands since bind if configured wrong can affect other DNS servers. Too many approach
security with the same thoughts, " Why would anyone care about my files?" It is the very
computer resources that are wanted very rarely the files. This is part of what has created
all of the bot networks. If  I can control 300 machines each to send 30 emails as spam who
would notice, besides the receivers?

I agree that having to use su can be a pain and takes longer. Maybe you can think of it as
one small step to staying out of a bot net.

As far as GUI vs Cli. I do most of my configuration from Cli it is almost always more powerful
than almost any GUI I have come across. All of my troubleshooting starts at Cli since I can get
error messages that seem to forgotten in the GUI environment. There is alot to remember for
switches, even I only recall the frequently used ones. Man seemed cryptic, which I have learned
to conquer. Cli and switches for the average user may be over kill I agree. There needs to be a
balance. The failure that I see in GUI is the lack of logging and error messages.

When I moved completely to Linux type systems the most awe inspiring thing was the logging
system. It was intimidating but the troubleshooting got easier. Being that I am an administrator
it is can be difficult to see the other side. It is knowing that and listening to what my users want,
not what I decide is the way to do things. That creates the perfect solution for all of those involved.
Too many administrators deny any input from users, that is a mistake.

Bigpaws

[Triarius Fidelis]

I get really nervous when I see someone doing 30 copy&pastes  when I know that can be done with a single regexp and sed, but if I tell people that what they're doing is inefficient, and there's another way to do it, they ask for the exact line that will solve their problem and forget it.  No spark of interest in learning, or writting that line down.  Next time they'll do copypaste again, or at most, ask me again for that f*cking line.

The secret is to milk that dependency. You should start charging.

I think cli people have very particular way of using computers, and probably taking things on other life situations.   Maybe it's just me, but avoiding repetition, and learning how to do better next time is one of my  guides in everything I do. I think it's all related to knowledge and reuse.

Agreed.

[StrayBit]

I didn't perceive ANY evidence of flame there, Kidd.  And I thank you for your comments.  I also think you described me to a tee with

I think cli people have very particular way of using computers, and probably taking things on other life situations.

[Pita]

A few days ago my good woman bought a HP-Mini. Her first try on a computer
It looks like a nice piece with SUSE and Gnome desktop. She does not have
to log-in the booting goes straight to the desktop. Unfortunately MC is not
in the system. This will be my second task to install it after I had to set
the time correctly.

There is the gnome-terminal and xterm to choose from. My good woman is     
taking paid-for computer lessons all on Window. She claims I am the worst teacher.  
Now  those computer instructors know barely anything about Linux und much
less what a terminal is good for. How would she ever know by herself?   

No logging-in and if there is a display manager for the GUI crowd does not 
play in favor of somebody using and learning the command line in a terminal.
May be that is what the masses want and they are sluggish.

VL does a right step for those not using a GUI to log-in by putting on the   
console some pointers for terminal commands, however, judging from this forum
most users use gdm or kdm where those pointers are lost. I find display
managers a useless joke and counterproductive for the point of this
discussion.

And yes, Epic Fail Guy playing music is faster from the command line. My command is
'cdplay' for music Cds and away it plays from the console into X and back. Try to
beat that with those player programs.

I have even used lynx from the console to post on this forum. Might be a first. Was
forced to when the new X would not take my graphic card.

[kidd]

If we're talking about doing multiple tasks on console (playing music, browsing, etc) , I have to mention GNU screen. a great piece of software to manage your console apps all in one terminal.  You can think of it as a console tabbed terminal, but in fact it does much more than that.

You can monitorize a given window for activity (great for irc/IM) or be noticed when there's 30 seconds of 'silence' (good for long compilations or program executions).

Detatch and reattatch are great if you do ssh.

To play music I use mocp or mplayer combined with find and piping.

Code:

find /mnt/data/music -iname "doors.*woman.*mp3" | mplayer 

this will play the whole The Doors L.A. Woman LP.  Of course, I have a longer script to make it faster and smarter , but you get the idea.  I don't need to know where exactly is that directory to play it.  I can get a higher abstraction level this way compared to point and click . 

 

[Windozer]

GNU screen

Oh boy - way back to the future: DEC VT100 !    (Well, yes, actually, this does look very useful.)

>>

Code:

find /mnt/data/music -iname "doors.*woman.*mp3" | mplayer

I wish the command line were *this* powerful:

Code:

find /mnt/data/money -isize "*$* large*bills." | mybank 

[Joe1962]

GNU screen has been indispensable for me since I found out about it a couple of years ago. I use it in ssh sessions, to leave stuff running and get back to them later.

[MikeCindi]

...LP.

Now that's an archaic term...The GUI generation may need some help with it. 

[kidd]

lol

Well in fact when I wrote this, the word 'album' didn't came to my mind, so I wrote what was thinking about: A big disk I've at home

[rbistolfi]

GNU screen has been indispensable for me since I found out about it a couple of years ago. I use it in ssh sessions, to leave stuff running and get back to them later.

A user said irssi was indispensable for him at #vectorlinux, Bigpaws replicated that that would be vim for him, I think its a very hard decision between vim and GNU Screen if I should pick one...
As vim come as default in VL, GNU Screen is the first software I actually install.

[kidd]

Yesterday I installed vl 6 RC3.

My first commands were:

Code:

su
slapt-get --update
slapt-get --install screen vim-gvim ratpoison zsh xclip emacs
cpan DBIx::Class

as ratpoison isn't in vl6 repos yet, I used a perl app I did some time ago to migrate packages from one vl version to another.

Code:

svn -co ... (to get vlmigrate)
vlmigrate.pl ratpoison
installpkg ratpoison*tlz

vlmigrate takes sources from vl 5.9 repo, downloads them, and checks in 5.9 PACKAGES.TXT for deps.  all unmet deps are downloaded and compiled and finally it compiles your package.  You end with a bunch of *tlz files you only have to installpkg.

restarted X, and ready to hack!

)

[Windozer]

... people who might want to learn ... get something more out of using their computers?
... people out there who could be interested in CLI stuff (on whatever OS) ...

... I used dos ... constructed a batch file that produced a simple menu

Tom and all,

Lyn reminds us here of one of Window's early, persistent, and greatest flaws: the lack of a proper shell interpreter.  That changed rapidly once HTML scripting caught on. About the same time as jscript, vbscript, the Window's Scripting Host began to fill the ShellVoid --- the humble batch file was nearly redeemed.

Enter "PowerShell" - finally, a killer shell for windows. It IS a powerhouse. For example, there's sample code for a web server in PS - and it works. PS can access anything in the system and also uses .net.  (yes, there are security issues, but that's the nature of power.) 

I'm not a windows advocate, just have to get things done. For admin work, PS is wonderful.

@GrannyGeek: you might want to avert your eyes from the following --- I don't want to be responsible for causing you nausa 
 

Code:

ps -eo user,pcpu,pid,cmd | sort -r -k2 | head -6

Although Iagagnon shows this as an example of how difficult such things would be in GUI, it got me thinking of doing almost the same thing in powershell:

Code:

ps | sort -property cpu -descending|select -first 6

Also, the editor SciTE has been mentioned in several threads lately ... it has powershell extensions, as well as tons of features and extensions when run under linux.

Regardless of the pros and cons of CLI versus GUI, there is of course much good in experimentation. Hacking CLI stuff is a great way to learn about the things happening under the hood.

JM2C
cheers
- H

[Triarius Fidelis]

Some things Microsoft came up with are actually good. C# and Powershell definitely stand out.

[Windozer]

C# and Powershell definitely stand out.

Indeed, although C# and .net were a real *cluster* if you had to do any serious lifting with it. One of the middle-ware guys in our MS-only shop liked to say, "C# plays like an E flat."

[The Headacher]

One of the middle-ware guys in our MS-only shop liked to say, "C# plays like an E flat."

He wasn't much of a musician then was he?