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Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

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Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#51

Post by Keyframe »

Samba gave me flashback to last week where I had an external drive on my Fedora workstation which I wanted to share with my network... external drive was NTFS. Many hours later, and an setenforce 0 it showed up, but no permanent solution.

That's the usability of common things in everything not major desktop/user OS, and always has been. OTOH, when I'm programming, I would NEVER give up the comfort of GNU stuff. It's just so convenient. Even the editors. Yes, VS Code is great, but oh man - in vim I have a persistent undo with branching, among many many other things.

It's actually amazing how, on the one hand, you have this advanced system for complicated stuff geared towards awesome usability and on the other hand it trips over itself on mundane things which keep it away from the year of Linux (GNU more like it) on desktop.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#52

Post by digi_owl »

Keyframe wrote: post #51

Samba gave me flashback to last week where I had an external drive on my Fedora workstation which I wanted to share with my network... external drive was NTFS. Many hours later, and an setenforce 0 it showed up, but no permanent solution. That's the usability of common things in everything not major desktop/user OS, and always has been. OTOH, when I'm programming, I would NEVER give up the comfort of GNU stuff. It's…

Samba is a "mess" because anything Microsoft is a mess to be compatible with if you are not MS.

That said, sharing files across networks is a hell all its own. In particular if you want something to just automagically appear in some GUI across the office/world/whatever.

Only "reliable" ones are those that require the user at the other end to know what address to enter to get access.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#53

Post by digi_owl »

kbenson wrote: post #36
zokier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But here is a different, and I hope very provocative, reason that you should consider a terminal email client: > Local mail delivery does not traverse the Internet, or any network. The implication here being that you are running the clients on the email server. Wouldn't you effectively get the same security by tunneling IMAP over SSH?

> The implication here being that you are running the clients on the email server. That's a common scenario, but most linux/ BSD distros ship with some mail server software installed and configured to run out of the box, even if also set to not allow external connections, as that's how the system delivers messages to users (e.g. cron output, etc). So almost every linux/ BSD is a mail server, even if it may not be the…

Unix have all kinds of funny things if all happens within a single box.

If you want to send someone a message, there is write (if the person have mesg set to yes). There is also talk, but it requires its own daemon.

Seriously, _nix started out in the mainframe era. Meaning that the basic assumption was multiple terminals hooked up to a single computer, with a different user on each terminal.

Sadly we have a generation or more that grew up with single user computers, and seems to insist on turning _nix into that rather than embrace what it can offer.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#54

Post by kbenson »

sitkack wrote: post #49
rsync wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The guy is absolutely right. Mutt is not a gimmick like ascii video on terminal." I personally use (al)pine and I could not agree more. But here is a different, and I hope very provocative, reason that you should consider a terminal email client: Local mail delivery does not traverse the Internet, or any network. So, for instance, when I send an email to one of my engineers at rsync.net, even though it is sent in pl…

Is Alpine still getting security updates? UW doesn't maintain it anymore, like at all. It exists as git repo out in the ether [1] I'd probably run it in a non-privileged container. Infact, I should be doing that for Mutt ... [1] http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git

The last commit to that git repo was a couple days ago, and looking at the log, it gets a new commit every week or so. It may be under different stewardship now, but it definitely seems maintained. The last stable release was last year, but development seems to be proceeding nicely. The full site is at http://alpine.x10host.com/alpine/.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#55

Post by kxyvr »

Snortibartfast wrote: post #28

I used Alpine as my main email client for a while. I really like it, but I had problems with Fastmail's LDAP-addressbook. And if I remember correctly I couldn't use Office365's addressbook either. Another problem was integrating Alpine with calendars (at least O365). khal (with vdirsyncer) is a nice calendar app. I haven't got it working perfectly with Office635 yet though; I use a read-only url to the calendar, so I…

My solution has been to use the Fastmail website to accept calendar invites, but use khal and vdirsyncer to manager the majority of my calendar. As far as contacts, I believe Fastmail can import and export to vCard, which can be managed locally with khard and vdirsyncer as well. I use khard directly with mutt to access email contacts and I've been happy with it.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#56

Post by pvg »

tom_ wrote: post #25
pvg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people would kill the lice first but sophisticated users preferred live ones which enabled advanced effects like 'dynamic text' and 'escape sequences'.

In some ways I think we were actually happier back then.

But you try and tell the young people today that, and they won't believe you.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#57

Post by canhascodez »

digi_owl wrote: post #53
kbenson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The implication here being that you are running the clients on the email server. That's a common scenario, but most linux/ BSD distros ship with some mail server software installed and configured to run out of the box, even if also set to not allow external connections, as that's how the system delivers messages to users (e.g. cron output, etc). So almost every linux/ BSD is a mail server, even if it may not be the…

Unix have all kinds of funny things if all happens within a single box. If you want to send someone a message, there is write (if the person have mesg set to yes). There is also talk, but it requires its own daemon. Seriously, _nix started out in the mainframe era. Meaning that the basic assumption was multiple terminals hooked up to a single computer, with a different user on each terminal. Sadly we have a generatio…

Multiseat is a bit complex under X11, but certainly possible today. What do you see as the advantages of thin clients, though?

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#58

Post by pq0ak2nnd »

amelius wrote: post #33
pq0ak2nnd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO The 20+ years spent trying to make a desktop version of linux has SEVERELY reduced overall knowledge of unix practices and patterns. I'm not just talking about things like automake or the contents in /bin that younger programmers never learn, but the CLI in general. A while back I was working with an intern who as struggling with using distributed linux boxes because all he knew was Gnome: the CLI was utterly fo…

But if you had to do something now on some alien OS that you didn't know the internals of, wouldn't you prefer a GUI?

That's an interesting question. My first response is: hell no.

But I think what's behind your question is the fact that part of UX/UI is to abstract experience and interface. So maybe if I first had to poke at an alien OS I would try its UI as part of familiarity in getting to know it, but ultimately as a system architect, hardware developer, and former O/S dev with 4 decades experience, I want to see how it really works. The UI is always the topmost layer.

I'd love to encounter a literal "alien" OS in my lifetime. That'd be a pinnacle of my pentesting & reverse engineering creds.

Good question.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#59

Post by _t4xj »

Will the terminal ever disappear?

I would assume that the percentage of computer users who do significant work in a terminal (email, IRC, coding, etc.) is still decreasing steadily today. What I'm not sure about, how does this decline in penetration compare to the (still real) growth in the worldwide computer user base?

Seems that at least the Internet user base is still growing ~10% p.a. What does this mean for absolute terminal user numbers? I would guess they peaked already a decade ago, with people switching to / starting out with smartphones and tablets instead of notebooks/desktops.

I can also see a world in which a highly disruptive technology (e.g., brain-computer interfaces) would make the terminal redundant once and forever, assuming that the new technology was more efficient/productive than a terminal.

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