This is great! I learned a couple of new commands today, and I've been on unix for years.
because you've never needed the commands in all those years ?
Personally I think the link is an enormous waste of time.
You Don't Need a GUI
41–50 of 439 posts
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#42Most the things in this list are things that you technically don't need a GUI for, but a GUI is so much better that doing it in command line is pointless. For instance, you could do all those file operations in the terminal, but chances are you're already browsing files using a GUI file manager so opening a terminal to do those things is pointless. Terminal is great if you want to do something complicated that a GUI…
Different people will draw the line in different places. Take your example of file management: since I'm usually in a terminal, it takes far less effort to enter a command than it does to open up a graphical file manager and navigate to the desired directories. The other issue is that few file managers are as powerful as command line utilities. There are exceptions. I am quite fond of Directory Opus while using Windo…
There's more than just effort to consider. Discoverability, confidence, error recovery, and consistency come to mind.
You might be in a terminal, in the directory you're you want to copy a file within... $open ., type file name, command-C, command-C, command-W would do a great job, require minimal additional effort, but provide better visibility into the status of the copy, allow you to better handle file name collisions, allow you to retry, and be undoable.
If you didn't know the correct program or arguments for zip, you could simply look around the menus and find 'compress'.
Even scripting, you can use the best tool for the job. AppleScript or similar can be used to script GUIs and also for testing.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#43I've been using command line since my first computer with DOS in 1995, and I regularly use it now. For some tasks, like git or text processing, I strongly prefer it. Over the years I've used bash, fish and finally stopped on a pretty vanilla zsh setup, and can confidently call myself a mediocre console user.
But filesystem stuff? Looking at lists of files, ordering them, copying and moving? That's exactly what GUIs are easily superior at. Especially when the files you're working with are some kind of media.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do most file operations in a terminal because I can switch between my editor and the terminal without picking up the mouse. I do use a file manager to organize media files.
The mouse is not a requisite for a GUI file manager
Very true https://i3wm.org/. I3 is a great WM that allows you to avoid having to use the mouse.
That said I now work in the Windows world. I find that if you are using the same tools day in day out then the keyboard is the way to go. If you have to use new tools every other week the GUI is hands down much better. Unfortunately in my role I'm doing exactly that.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#45GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…
> If I don't remember the `df` command... what do I do apart from searching on the internet? You can do that locally on the command line too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apropos_(Unix)
or man -k "disk space"
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#46Is this satire? Every single example shown is quicker and easier in a GUI. Shell scripting and pipes are the only times a command-line is better than a GUI.
I literally do all of these on the command line except for using a calendar. Using a GUI is fiddly and terrible.
Which isn't to say everyone needs to feel like I do. But some people at least will strongly disagree that the GUI is easier.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#47Funnily enough, even with my own code made for running calculations only I will ever care about, I don't feel like a program is really complete until I've made myself a lame little GUI to drive it.
The problem is always the same. The "ugh" factor when I try to make the program do something I haven't made it do in a while. If code doesn't have a pretty front end for me to click on, I'll run it much less frequently.
(The second benefit, entirely unrelated to the article, is that it also allows me to make all my code incredibly fragile to bad inputs, right up until the point I make a GUI which is extremely fussy about inputs. Obviously, that could be done without the GUI, but it keeps me from spending to much time-- both in the sense of programming time and in the sense of run-time-- over-sanitizing inputs in the bulk of my code.)
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#48GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…
This reminds me of my first experience with (DEC) Unix at JHU. I had been a VMS user, so when I logged into the unfamiliar system I typed in "help." The JHU site admin had helpfully set the output of the help command to be, paraphrasing, "I see you know nothing about Unix, please talk to the staff member." He told me, "oh, in Unix help is spelled man." Obvious!
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#49Funnily enough, even with my own code made for running calculations only I will ever care about, I don't feel like a program is really complete until I've made myself a lame little GUI to drive it. The problem is always the same. The "ugh" factor when I try to make the program do something I haven't made it do in a while. If code doesn't have a pretty front end for me to click on, I'll run it much less frequently. (T…
I don't understand your second point. The GUI gives you to sanitize inputs, or the opposite?
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#50GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…
This reminds me of my first experience with (DEC) Unix at JHU. I had been a VMS user, so when I logged into the unfamiliar system I typed in "help." The JHU site admin had helpfully set the output of the help command to be, paraphrasing, "I see you know nothing about Unix, please talk to the staff member." He told me, "oh, in Unix help is spelled man." Obvious!
Bash, at least, is more helpful these days.
$help
GNU bash, version 5.0.17(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
These shell commands are defined internally. Type `help' to see this list.
Type `help name' to find out more about the function `name'.
Use `info bash' to find out more about the shell in general.
Use `man -k' or `info' to find out more about commands not in this list.