Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Command Line Challenge.

blog.chavezgu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–45 of 45 posts

Re: The Command Line Challenge.

#41

Post by count »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #38
sliverstorm wrote: post #11

My (unintentional) Command Line Challenge was trying to build Gentoo on a 100MHz laptop with no other computers around. That was about 2 days of compute work. At the time, it didn't compile reliably either, so emerge would crash 5-10 times while trying to get to Xorg. Learning to fix the problems, particularly via lynx, brought me up to speed more quickly than anything else. Something to be said for leaning by immers…

I agree with your general point, but configuring Xorg is a form of torture no man deserves to go through.

Hah, kids these days. Xorg is a DREAM compared to it's predecessors X11 and friends.

Re: The Command Line Challenge.

#42

Post by MatthewPhillips »

count wrote: post #41
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your general point, but configuring Xorg is a form of torture no man deserves to go through.

Hah, kids these days. Xorg is a DREAM compared to it's predecessors X11 and friends.

Xorg is fine today, it's pretty much automatic. I'm talking about 6 or 7 years ago when you had to dive into xorg.conf to get 75% of graphics cards to work.

Re: The Command Line Challenge.

#43

Post by dsr_ »

Yeah, so, I did that. On VT-220 and VT-320 terminals, connected to VMS on VAX and Solaris on Sun. Oh, and command line on a 486DX33 running Linux so long ago that the concept of a distribution was new.

I love command lines, and I use them every day. Most of my work is on a command line... in a term window in X. The Linux virtual terminal system was a great advantage. The ability to run multiple terminal windows on-screen at the same time, with a clipboard! that was an amazing achievement. Virtual desktops? Great.

All of these things are advantages, and you don't need to stop using the good stuff that works in order to use the new stuff that works. Today I click on one of my sidebar icons to summon the terminal windows in which I do most of my work. I have enough RAM that I can keep heavy graphical browsers open -- FF and Chrome -- with hundreds of tabs open.

I'm happy to be able to use everything. I'm happy to have choices.

Re: The Command Line Challenge.

#44

Post by sgtsugarfingers »

dsr_ wrote: post #43

Yeah, so, I did that. On VT-220 and VT-320 terminals, connected to VMS on VAX and Solaris on Sun. Oh, and command line on a 486DX33 running Linux so long ago that the concept of a distribution was new. I love command lines, and I use them every day. Most of my work is on a command line... in a term window in X. The Linux virtual terminal system was a great advantage. The ability to run multiple terminal windows on-sc…

The article didn't make any religious argument for the command line opposed to a GUI. His background is the opposite of yours. For him, relying on the ease of a graphical interface was a habitual deterrent to stepping out of his comfort zone and learning the CLI. Temporarily restricting himself to use only CLI was a focusing mechanism to help him gain strength in a weak area. His efforts demonstrate the hacker ethic quite well. He could have easily stuck with the familiar, but decided to force himself to go out on a limb.

Re: The Command Line Challenge.

#45

Post by dredmorbius »

tsm wrote: post #39
dredmorbius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, more and more of the text-mode / console browsers have graphical support. The real challenge these days is javascript. I'm not aware of a text-mode browser that interprets javascript. I'd also like to give a plug for w3m. It's far more user-friendly than lynx, and IMO more advanced than elinks.

elinks has a very basic JS interpreter. http://elinks.or.cz/documentation/manual.html#ecmascript

Cool, thanks.
Post reply on HN