OutsourcedMath Social Network

josef 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

i literally do this in parallel sometimes. like i open documentation for the command line thing as well as a GUI for it, and keep snapping my head back and forth between them. of course in reality there are usually 3-4 different GUI frontends which offer varying levels of brokeness for me to compare. usually after half an hour i've got a really good understanding of the pros and cons of each. and also i haven't accomplished the task at all

mcc reshared this.

Sean Eric Fagan 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

As the author of many a command-line utility, I see nothing wrong with this.

Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

@kithrup The "wrong" thing could perhaps be that the GUI, at least this particular GUI, is now verging on 30 years of age and should probably not lack so many of these functionalities.

@Sean Eric Fagan

Sean Eric Fagan 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

@adriano A lot of macOS' system apps use the same frameworks that some of the CLI tools use, but offer a lot more options. The reason for this is that Apple *hates* having options in GUI tools.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo

Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

@kithrup There was, many years ago, a conscious decision in GNOME design to eliminate options "wherever possible" and consolidate on "solid defaults". And they kinda overdid it, especially considering their audience.

@Sean Eric Fagan

My name is Gordo (not really) 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@adriano @kithrup This × a million. I know a lot of people swear by GNOME, and that's fine. Diff'rent strokes and all, but for me, I just can't get behind the "less is more" philosophy when it comes to features and functionality. Less is more, to me at least, means more white space, reduce visual clutter, establish visual heirarchy, not "make it so simple, it's incomplete."

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Sean Eric Fagan

Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@gordoooo_z @kithrup Ehhh. Personally I’ve used Gnome or its Ubuntu variant for about 25 years now, and I’ve never minded. It works for me. It does have its nags, granted, but I couldn’t say if they’re strictly from Gnome or from Ubuntu’s version.

@My name is Gordo (not really) @Sean Eric Fagan

My name is Gordo (not really) 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@adriano @kithrup I get it. We all have our tools and ways of working. If I don't like something, I like being able to make it act how I want it to, rather than learning to accept it as it is. That's just how my brain works, but again, there are many GNOME faithfuls who feel comfortable in that environment, so clearly that's the right environment for them. Choice is a beautiful thing.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Sean Eric Fagan

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@gordoooo_z @adriano @kithrup I have used both kde and gnome, both recently and 20 years ago. I picked Gnome this time because I like the margins between ui elements better.

But now that I'm getting beyond basic use im definitely finding elements of their design philosophy… freakish. In ways I don't remember it being 20 years ago, exactly.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @My name is Gordo (not really) @Sean Eric Fagan

Isaac Ji Kuo 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@gordoooo_z @adriano @kithrup

Many of the big desktops simultaneously got weird ideas that they had to revamp their desktop UIs (Windows 8, KDE4, GNOME3, Ubuntu Unity).

I don't know what they all were thinking, but I ended up settling on XFCE, which presumably didn't have the resources to revamp everything for no reason.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @My name is Gordo (not really) @Sean Eric Fagan

Christopher McCurdy 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

@adriano @kithrup and that's why I still use KDE, despite not thinking it's particularly great anymore. Every time I try to go back to gnome, I try to configure something, find out I can't (or it's only possible via gconf), then reinstall KDE.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Sean Eric Fagan

CohenTheBlue 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@chrismccurdy @adriano @kithrup 2/2
I find most things are doable in Gnome 3 using extensions or editing the config directly with dconf editor. I've used it for 7 years? Probably time to check out i3 again.

Dash to Panel is an important extension. Others are No overview at start-up, Pixel Saver, Quick Close in Overview, User Themes, Gamemode. Debian has packages for all of these, with the format "gnome-shell-extension-*" and some being in "gnome-shell-extensions-extra".

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Christopher McCurdy @Sean Eric Fagan

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@cohentheblue @chrismccurdy @adriano @kithrup well, I use dash to panel, and I consider it a must-use, but it breaks if you have a touchpad. It assumes a touch wheel, and when it gets the HD scroll events it interprets each tiny pixel movement as a whole wheel click. Also, on horizontal scroll events, it freaks out.

I filed a bug, but stalebot keeps trying to close it. I think I found the bug site in the dash-to-panel source, but it's all uncommented JS, so I don't know what to do with it.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Christopher McCurdy @Sean Eric Fagan @CohenTheBlue

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@cohentheblue @chrismccurdy @adriano @kithrup I'm looking forward to Cosmic DE.

@Un terrible AdRiANO de miedo @Christopher McCurdy @Sean Eric Fagan @CohenTheBlue

boiert 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

It’s where I was very proud of my brother for getting his disk mounted the way he wanted, himself, using the ‘disks’ gui app.
I’m happy the way things were going and confident of contemporary linux to be able to do most of the basic things the way you’d want to.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@boiert it's nice! i wish i had been able to figure out how to use the disks app however because i was not able without help from mastodon 🙁

@boiert

boiert 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I tend to try and constrain myself to using the gui as much as possible, in a way -demanding- things to be achievable that way.
Even though I am able to use the terminal, I use it as little as I can.
I also have an example of where I am totally lost without a gui: parted or gparted ;) @CobaltVelvet

@hinged death kinnie

juv3nal 2 months ago • hometown (AP)

I'm not a linux person really so if it's something doable with a gui, I'll prefer a gui...

but as a programmer, I'll oftentimes need to call something from within a program or shell script and while there *might* be a way to do that with a gui no way in hell I'm going to figure *that* shit out if a CL way exists.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@suricrasia on windows it feels like more often "there's a gui tool for doing this that is documented as existing by microsoft and it doesn't work, and there's a second gui tool that actually works and it's secret and hidden and when you open it it's using windows 95 widgets"

@blackle mori

Dragon-sided D 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

You will never attain Satori
If your hands must constantly leave home position to fiddle with mouse

Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻‍💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵] 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Windows: do you want to open in Paint3D?

Me: I have no idea how to use that, Paint will do!

Biggles - Chrimmidge Edition 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@suricrasia Windows 95 widgets being a gui strapped over the top of DOS cli?

@blackle mori

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@Taco_lad @suricrasia Probably

@Biggles - Chrimmidge Edition @blackle mori

Scherzog von Beast Oil 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I have also been getting this feeling from a lot of Windows workflows ever since PowerShell was introduced...

Leon 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

ooh what if you had a ui framework that exclusively uses command pattern for user input that also had a cli? That way every command is a command. You could pop open a command history window for any app and copy and paste it to a terminal and replicate or script it. That would be sick

Cranberry Sauce is People!!! 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I have been using "Unix" command lines since 1985. I was a Fortran / assembly programmer for a living back then, working in marketing for a high-performance computing company. I was dragged kicking and screaming to spreadsheets, mostly because the support folks and managers had no other way to deal with numeric data.

I've never liked GUI tools or their bastard descendants web / mobile apps. They need to exist for people who aren't programmers, but they get in the way of people who are.

Cobweb 👹👻🕸️🎃 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I’ve considered just removing all the DEs from my computer and doing all CLI all the time

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@cobweb good news i'm working on a web browser that works in this configuration (not a joke)

@Cobweb 👹👻🕸️🎃

Scott Richmond 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I was 100% sure when I started reading that by "carcinization" you meant the "rewrite CLI tools in Rust" tendency, e.g., `eza` and `fd`.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@scr i am also doing this

@Scott Richmond

ocdtrekkie 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@suricrasia This is 100% accurate. Microsoft has made it deliberately hard to go straight to Windows 7's style Devices and Printers... but if you want to actually fix a printing issue, it's the screen you need 100% of the time.

It still comes up in search and in the Control Panel, but both are redirected to Settings now. There's an invocation to launch it directly but it's sort of ridiculous.

@blackle mori

Kyle Hasselbacher 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

A big reason I gravitate to the CLI is that it's so much easier to tell someone else what I did.

In tickets at work, in Slack, whatever, just copy and paste exactly the steps I took.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@kyleha yeah, and vice versa. when someone gives me instructions in a command line tool i just do it. but when someone gives me instructions in a gui tool they are like "open the Palette Inspector dialog" and I'm like the what? what is that? where is it

i like gui better but i have this problem every time 🙁

@Kyle Hasselbacher

stephen ryner jr. 🦉 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

my favorite is when it turns out the GUI is just calling some command line tool in the end anyway

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️ 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@nuthatch That was literally all of AIX.

@stephen ryner jr. 🦉

stephen ryner jr. 🦉 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@stevendbrewer to be fair, some tools like FFmeg are convoluted enough to make a good UI worthwhile 🥲

@Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️ 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@nuthatch I will admit that I prefer to use Inkscape than write SVG by hand.

@stephen ryner jr. 🦉

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@stevendbrewer @nuthatch *nervously* i… i'm better at doing it by hand

@stephen ryner jr. 🦉 @Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️ 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@nuthatch I'm way too sloppy. I used to hand-code a lot of HTML and renderers tend to be extremely forgiving of sloppy HTML. But I've found that isn't true with SVG, and very small mistakes wreck the whole thing.

@stephen ryner jr. 🦉

DB Schwein 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

It took me til Windows 10 before I stopped doing this in Windows! I can't imagine it every going away in Linux.

Max™ 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

this has been the hardest part of learning to use a phone full time

Patrick Wyatt 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Oh, I see you’ve used git then 😝

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@netcoyote *miserably* i don't use git. but i have to tech-support people using GUI git frontends which are even more confusing than command line git

@Patrick Wyatt

Patrick Wyatt 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Yeah, source control tools are tough. When I first learned Perforce, many years ago, I just couldn’t even figure out how it worked. Felt dumb. Then someone showed me the command line and it seemed so much simpler. Only like five commands to learn, I think. Eventually I got it.

Then when I first learned git is was so alien. I eventually had to throw out my whole mental model for it being “like Perforce”, and learn from scratch.

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@netcoyote I use mercurial. It's basically the same data model as git, but it has an interface

@Patrick Wyatt

Negative12DollarBill 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I like it when the GUI tool displays the command it's really using behind the scenes so you can learn from it, tweak it etc.

jessica l. parsons 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

.. that and a level of ui inconsistency that is even worse than o.g. X11 environments are.

And once you fall back to the shell it becomes an endless hell of gnuware so it’s winning all the way down!

Greg Bell 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I thought this was going to end as a joke for how we, like crabs, evolve to use shells

patcanfield 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Elon may be a genius-But apparently his upbringing has caused some despicability

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@patcanfield I don't understand.

@patcanfield

patcanfield 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

well, it's way past time for me to explain it to you! I mean, FIVE DAYS!? I have a 35 second attention span at best!

patcanfield 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Elon doesn't think he's a creep, either. He didn't become this way-geniology(for geniuses)

patcanfield 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Honestly--and Truly--anybody who says they do is lying

Alex White-Robinson 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I'd never thought about this before but that probably massively contributes to the GUI workflows remaining incomplete.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@depereo Yeah. The power users construct the GUI workflows for the basic users to use, but they keep using the command line tools, so nobody noticed the GUI workflows don't work and never worked

@Alex White-Robinson

Alex White-Robinson 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I'm quietly pretty happy and proud of the work I did to learn Linux / cli tasks and gravitate to them for that reason but I'll try to use the GUI tools a bit more, maybe at least submit feature requests or try to add stuff I would need.

Good callout, thanks for highlighting it

Nova🐧✨ 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

and if you're like me who is a power user that also isn't nearly as good at remembering language as spatial stuff you try to use the GUI but that's clunky because not enough time and effort has been put in and it takes an eternity to remember what the cli command is or the 50 commands to find out all the info of a system from different perspectives to assemble a mental model with your limited working memory...

honestly I get why people hate CLI, I just want to DO an action and remembering the magic words is hard so I gotta look it up AGAIN

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Rachel Rawlings 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

That, and because the more you do something, the more you want to script it.

William D. Jones 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Transmission-Web sadly has this problem, but I dislike CLI interfaces to torrent clients enough that I go between Web when I can, RPC when I don't have a choice.

SpaceLifeForm 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Exactly. I prefer to avoid random problems when I know it will work at command line.

#Linux #UX

#linux #UX

ShadSterling 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I used to like how thorough the Windows GUI configuration tools were. But that was way back before they moved everything into the registry and out if the GUI; now I’m glad I stopped using Windows after XP

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Adam Katz :donor: 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

... assuming there's even a reasonable GUI tool to begin with.

My own story of exodus to Linux, which took place during finals week in response to an unrecoverable BSOD, was that I had a checklist of items on which I still relied on Windows. The last items on that list were Explorer and some games that I knew I'd lose.

Nautilus, Konqueror, and their competitors couldn't cut it. As a result, I went headlong into the command line. This was really good for me. I haven't used a file manager since then.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

loganer 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

but why are "normies" scared of text?

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@loganer because it's a grotesquely unpleasant user experience

@loganer

loganer 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

introspectively, maybe that's the problem?

see, I don't get it.
I find the terminal to be quite comfortable.

... but that's the problem, I don't get what would be comfortable for the "normie".

Lesley M 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇪🇺 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

@loganer
Maybe because they lack the encyclopaedic knowledge if how the computer actually works, and which command line tool (plus switches) do which task.
Its easier for programmers and sys-admins because they know the tools and how the system is knitted together. Normies don't, and rely on good GUIs to guide them without making catastrophic mistakes that kill the system.
Plus, maybe some folk just don't like lots of typing.

@loganer

Rhialto 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@latelesley @loganer Yeah, GUIs have the advantage that they can be much better discoverable. There are good guidelines for that and they exist for quite a while. The original Apple guidelines were pretty good (from the 1980s and 90s I think). But nowadays it often feels like GUIs are made by people who think that "old cannot be good", and they invent all sorts of new stuff (badly). And discoverability goes out the window: you have no idea where you could click or swipe or whatever.

@Lesley M 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇪🇺 @loganer

loganer 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@rhialto @latelesley
it's old because it's good, it has survive the test of time.

@Lesley M 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇪🇺 @Rhialto

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@loganer @rhialto @latelesley i don't think surviving the test of time is actually that hard

@Lesley M 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇪🇺 @Rhialto @loganer

`Da Elf 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

Thing | Other Thing | +n | KDialog [Yes/No] ...

If I want a GUI output. I don't.

Pseudo Nym 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@suricrasia

... In a locked filing cabinet, behind a sign saying "beware of jaguar"

@blackle mori

Plaid 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@prozacchiwawa This also happens extensively with Windows in enterprise as well. There’s a lot of stuff that can only be done properly or at scale either via api access or PowerShell (just another means of API access)

@prozacchiwawa

Peter Bautista 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

The windows comments are interesting. When I first started programming I preferred Windows and didn't like Mac, because Mac's GUI didn't make sense to me. With more experience I didn't care about the Mac GUI anymore because all my time was spent in the terminal or a browser. Then I tried to go back to Windows for personal use and found it's GUI was now worse than the Mac. So now I'm just Mac with terminal and a browser both for work and personal.

mcc 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

@peterbautista https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113177700637051966

mcc

2024-09-21 21:37:40

@suricrasia on windows it feels like more often "there's a gui tool for doing this that is documented as existing by microsoft and it doesn't work, and there's a second gui tool that actually works and it's secret and hidden and when you open it it's using windows 95 widgets"

@Peter Bautista

Howard Cohen for Harris/Walz 2 months ago • mastodon (AP)

I do work on the command line because I can capture the command and use them in scripts for automation, or to help in documenting how the system is configured/built. A gui is good for simple things that don't need repetition or documentation, in my opinion.

Isaac Ji Kuo 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

There's also the fact that you can search google or Stack Overflow and then copy/paste/modify in a text editor rather than go through the hassle of tediously following point-and-click screenshot directions.

I think most CLI usage is based on laziness rather than power user elitism.

FKA ZOG 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

then you repeat the task in the command line by hitting the up arrow and hitting enter.

While your GUI using colleagues take another 5 minutes to repeat the task, plus another 15 minutes of screenshotting to document.

glutto 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

I always have a command-line window open. Always. It auto-starts each time I start my computer. Without it running it feels like something essential is missing.

Brisingr05 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Sometimes I find TUIs to be a nice middle ground.

Joe 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Yes, unless I am doing something inherently visual like editing an image or a video, I use the command line. It is more flexible and things I have to do repeatedly can be scripted.

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@not2b I often lately find that I am using the command line for video and image editing tasks. Not because I prefer it. Because the GUI tools just either got worse or moved to subscription models

@Joe

sunshine 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Another reason why more experienced people tend to regard CLI workflows as easier is that when they work imperfectly or break, we have an error message to paste into search instead of a blank screen. (Also, such workflows are wayyy more composable with familiar tools like tee, emacs, grep, sed...)

GNU/Matt :fedora: :kde: 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@suricrasia but you might as well just do it by powershell in the end...

@blackle mori

CohenTheBlue 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

There's hardly ever a use case that won't be better served with command line since it allows automation. Possibly Blender is sometimes better to use with GUI? CAD can be automated with python in LibreCAD. I see very few GUI programs that have even basic feature and setting search.

Cassandrich 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

For me it's not that, but that there's no hidden state, no non reproducible interactive inputs, only steps you can write down, see how you got where you are, and redo as necessary. I do this not because GUI is lacking ability to do what I need, but despite GUI often having functionality I can't get at the command line that I end up having to forego.

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@dalias this is critical. And cli interfaces are often treated as "contracts" in a way GUIs are not. Half the time when I find directions on how to do a thing in a GUI I discover that either the directions are two years old or my copy of the software is two years old and everything is completely different.

This also means CLI tools retain design mistakes for twenty year periods, but perhaps a badly designed tool is better than an undocumented one, if those are the only choices.

@Cassandrich

Pendell 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@dalias at least if the CLI is a static target, and something's broken or dumb, people can figure out a workaround and that workaround will be useful and functional for years - instead of looking up ways to work around some GUI bullshit only to find that issue didn't *exist* two years ago.

@Cassandrich

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@dalias

Updates to our service-side warehouse/stock management tool (and this has been in practically every job I've ever worked) oftentimes include GUI updates and new skins, which serve a dual benefit: they make it more difficult to find things in the first place, and they invalidate, or at least make harder-to-read, much of the documentation which has been painstakingly scraped together through years of experience. And attrition. Mind the dead bodies in that pitfall over there, they're a little ripe.

I guess being a GUI designer who can actually sell their shiny! new skins has to be good work, if you can get it. Kinda makes things hard on the rest of us, though.

@Cassandrich

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@ocdtrekkie @LGS @mikey @suricrasia my current plan is to pay whatever you have to pay to get long term corporate support for windows 10, and then when they sunset *that*, I will extrude a crystal shell around myself and never emerge

@ocdtrekkie @Mike, but Haunted :ghost_owo: @blackle mori @:startrek: As not seen on TV!

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@ireneista ah, yeah, this was the way I worded it: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113179132767782133

mcc

2024-09-22 03:41:53

@dalias this is critical. And cli interfaces are often treated as "contracts" in a way GUIs are not. Half the time when I find directions on how to do a thing in a GUI I discover that either the directions are two years old or my copy of the software is two years old and everything is completely different.

This also means CLI tools retain design mistakes for twenty year periods, but perhaps a badly designed tool is better than an undocumented one, if those are the only choices.

@ireneista

:startrek: As not seen on TV! 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@ocdtrekkie @mikey @suricrasia 🤣

@ocdtrekkie @Mike, but Haunted :ghost_owo: @blackle mori

mcc 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@ireneista @lispi314 @ipsquiggle Applescript was extremely widely supported by third party software in the pre os x era. It helped that although the core GUI primitives were not automatically scriptable, basically all interactions between software and the operating system could be directly harnessed by Applescript. If Mac OS could direct a program to do a thing, then Applescript could also do it.

@ipsquiggle @LisPi @ireneista

alexraffa :unverified: 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

interesting, ever wondered why is it?

Fish Id Wardrobe 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Some of the time this is simply because the linux commnd line is more powerful than a GUI *can* be. You're sticking seperate commands together in a way unique to you. what GUI can duplicate—
`head -1 foo* |cut -c1-20 |tar cvzf file.tgz –`?

david_chisnall 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

There’s a related issue that CLIs evolve more slowly. In many cases, the command-line method of doing something is the same as it was 20-30 years ago, whereas the GUI method has changed multiple times over that period. For things I do only once every couple of years, the CLI method is stable.

This is less true on Linux, where companies like Red Hat sell certifications and profit from gratuitously changing CLIs because they make the newer certifications valuable, but on other *NIX systems (and post-PowerShell Windows) it usually applies.

Rob Fahrni 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@ocdtrekkie @LGS @mikey @suricrasia 😳🤣

@ocdtrekkie @Mike, but Haunted :ghost_owo: @blackle mori @:startrek: As not seen on TV!

MaineC 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

escalation: people switching to Linux because there's at least an option to switch to the command line, whereas in the OS used before they clicked through UIs and clever tweaking tools to no avail

Barry Schwartz 🫖 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Nah, it's because Linux is GNU, and GNU really IS Unix, and on Unix you are SUPPOSED to use the command line.

This is apparent to me because I predate Linux and predate GUIs. The whole IDEA of the Unix shell was to empower the command line. Other command line processors for similar computers did not do that. They merely ran programs.

((( David "Kahomono" Frier ))) 1 month ago friendica

Other command line processors for similar computers did not do that. They merely ran programs.

Not true of Multics.

but then that was the direct ancestor of Unix.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 likes this.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@kah0mono It's not true of various IBM OSes for computers of different essential kind, either. One can do database programming in their command languages, and RPG is used the way C is used in Unix.

@((( David "Kahomono" Frier )))

Barry Schwartz 🫖 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@kah0mono C itself is a high level assembler for PDP/11. 😀

@((( David "Kahomono" Frier )))