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Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

putorius.net

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#41
post #5

A dictionary? I mean, that's neat and all, but not all that useful is it? I might check the weather once a day, tops. This is better solved by having a widget on my smartphone. Same for the dictionary, and same for short google searches too (Firefox Focus). I had a twinge of hope that this might have been more of an introduction to using the terminal effectively on Linux for diagnoses. I'm new to Linux, and every tim…

>A dictionary? I mean, that's neat and all, but not all that useful is it?

Depends on your job. For certain jobs is 10x more useful than most programs you use every day...

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#43
post #5

A dictionary? I mean, that's neat and all, but not all that useful is it? I might check the weather once a day, tops. This is better solved by having a widget on my smartphone. Same for the dictionary, and same for short google searches too (Firefox Focus). I had a twinge of hope that this might have been more of an introduction to using the terminal effectively on Linux for diagnoses. I'm new to Linux, and every tim…

I would never think to check the weather, but having it in my tmux status is useful https://github.com/jdxcode/tmux-weather

why would you want to know the weather at the spacetime position you are? A forecast, ok, but why here and now? Don't you have windows where you work?

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#44
post #12

awful scroll-jacking on this site. I really hate that.

What is even the point of scroll-jacking like this? Is there some SEO or monetization opportunity I don't get? Pretty much everyone (surely including the site owner?) who runs into weird chunky wrestling-an-oiled-pig scrolling like this is going to find it a crappy experience so there must be some compelling reason that I don't understand for its continuing existence.

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#45
post #39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Slide rules to replace your dependence on calculators"

That analogy doesn't hold well though, because calculators were (at least eventually) better at everything a slide rule could do. This article is predicated on the idea that this doesn't hold for CLI->GUI. You may disagree, but it's not obviously false.

Yes, I caught the drift of the article. I think a better title might have been "Teletype Emulation Strategies to Break Your Dependence on the GUI"

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#46
This article is awful. You're not going to "break your dependence on the GUI" by replacing 5 things you do a few times a day with obscure, less good CLI alternatives. What about things like manipulating files and running programs? Aren't they the things people do with computers?

Also, bc is especially terrible. Nobody who is already "dependent on the GUI" is going to want to know about scale= and all that. Better to use Python or even bash (echo $((123+456)) etc)

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#47
post #37
post #17

I love my dependence on the GUI, otherwise would still be stuck using MS-DOS.

If MS-DOS had enjoyed as much developer attention as the *nix command line experience has over the past couple of decades, that might not be so bad a prospect.

Couple? You mean 4?

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#48

This article is awful. You're not going to "break your dependence on the GUI" by replacing 5 things you do a few times a day with obscure, less good CLI alternatives. What about things like manipulating files and running programs? Aren't they the things people do with computers? Also, bc is especially terrible. Nobody who is already "dependent on the GUI" is going to want to know about scale= and all that. Better to…

> What about things like manipulating files and running programs? Aren't they the things people do with computers?

I'm confused. Manipulating files and running programs is a given, isn't it? You mean ls/cp/mv/rm-style? And running programs is... type in the name of the program (if in $PATH) or its path (if not) and press enter. Why would anyone bother blogging about that?

Re: Command Line Tools to Break Your Dependence on the GUI

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, it's called linux! :)

Stallman would point out that it's gnu/linux... but then there's a number of things he'd likely try and point out. More seriously, this doesn't seem to be linux as much as it is bash and a handful of commonly found on linux tools - all of which you can now run on windows anyway. Windows users: install bash and follow along.

If one were feeling contrary, one could point out that it's not GNU/Linux in this context... it's GNU/NT (WSL1 and cygwin). Unless we're talking about WSL2, in which case it is GNU/Linux again:)
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