warp and and some powershell version were the only “terminals” i used that seemed fixing the input line, but also did not quite feel right. the worst parts of terminals for me are that input line does not behave like a normal text field with mouse click, select and everything a user would expect in another context, that history mostly scrolls on a line basis instead of smooth pixel scrolling like any other document (don’t get me started on pagers, i still don't manage to disable man pages opening in some archaic mode that takes 3 tries to even exit from git), commands that default to tuis or clearing the screen. i tried to avoid unix as long as possible because of this and the absurd random / hostile folder names + layout but just because *nixes won does that mean we have to keep these archaic absurdities alive? why does even something where innovation would be simple like the vscode terminal feel like that and not like the chrome console with a normal text input line with graphic autocomplete and mostly immutable command response history with collapse/expandable sections? even unix commands that would not work in this mode could just run in something like an inline widget or new tab where they could read input lines by character or whatever weird behavior they expect.
Entering text in the terminal is complicated
41–50 of 229 posts
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#42I think the lowest hanging fruit would be doing something (anything) to improve discovery of commands. I have great grokking abilities but terrible memorization skills, and I end up forgetting how to do what I want to do and maybe even have done before. Browsing man pages for every command is my bane. It's also why I dislike GUI with unlabelled icons, I never remember what each one does.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you discover something on the terminal itself? You fall into a pattern and stick with it. It is only if you get out of band information that you can learn these tricks.
Bit confused by this comment. I don't think anybody suggested you're going to find these things solely by interacting with the terminal - but rather through "out of band information" as you put it, which in GP's case, as he said, was a book. The surprising part of TFA, and replies to my comment - to me anyway - is how one can go so many years without picking up that information.
I have never read a book about improving my terminal knowledge. I have a few tricks I have picked up over time (probably through posts like this!), but never done holistic research on the subject. Therefore, despite having used the terminal for decades, I likely have a similarly long list of basic terminal knowledge gaps. I do not know what I do not know.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#44I think the lowest hanging fruit would be doing something (anything) to improve discovery of commands. I have great grokking abilities but terrible memorization skills, and I end up forgetting how to do what I want to do and maybe even have done before. Browsing man pages for every command is my bane. It's also why I dislike GUI with unlabelled icons, I never remember what each one does.
Haven’t used it much but “apropos” is probably what you want.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, have a cmd.exe terminal thing? Why isn't that harming Windows? The Windows Command Prompt's default experience is worse than most if not all terminals you find on Linux systems. Even in play TTY, you're bound to find that the shortcuts the author mentioned work like a charm. To make my cmd.exe bearable I am using https://chrisant996.github.io/clink tl;dr You're comparin…
> Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, have a cmd.exe terminal thing? Why isn't that harming Windows? That's because the overwhelming majority of Windows usage, administration, and programming can be done almost entirely without ever touching the command-line, from Explorer.exe, Task Manager, Edge, Media Player, Paint, and built-in ZIP handling to the huge list of MMC snap-ins[1], and Visual Studio 2022. >…
> For the record, aeroplane cockpits have also gotten considerably simpler in the intervening half-century since Concorde and the first 747s. Here is an Airbus A350 cockpit[2].
I mean, aesthetically it's simpler sure, but the complexity is still there; it's just now much more digital.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#46> license reasons, if the program’s license is not GPL-compatible – readline is GPL-licensed, not LGPL
The older I get, the less patient I become with finding out some user experience sucks because of GPL / non-GPL knife fights.
It's been thirty-nine years now. I think the GPL was useful at its origin, but now the benefits of open-source are proven out, the world is deeply interconnected via the Internet, and it's a hindrance to have some code burden other code with requirements. I, for one, don't expect to write any further GPL code in my lifetime. I'd rather code be maximally unencumbered from interoperation.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#47I think the lowest hanging fruit would be doing something (anything) to improve discovery of commands. I have great grokking abilities but terrible memorization skills, and I end up forgetting how to do what I want to do and maybe even have done before. Browsing man pages for every command is my bane. It's also why I dislike GUI with unlabelled icons, I never remember what each one does.
At this point Google has basically taken over that function... "How do I _ on the command line?" more often than not gives one some starting point to develop from.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you love cars, popping the hood is probably part of the experience. For everyone else, it’s the sign of a very frustrating day ahead. As computer lovers, I feel we must endeavour to remain mindful that almost everyone else aren’t like us. They’re trying to get a task done. They don’t want to maintain or talk with the computer.
> As computer lovers, I feel we must endeavour to remain mindful that almost everyone else aren’t like us. They’re trying to get a task done. They don’t want to maintain or talk with the computer. This was pretty much my point. 95% of the population isn't like us, and don't need to interact with the terminal; thus, thinking the terminal is what's keeping Linux back doesn't make much sense to me
The larger issue is the times that the Linux UX goes off the rails and the solution turns out to be "You're going to have to bleat this esoteric incantation at the command line." I plugged my laptop into a second monitor the other day and, oops, for whatever Godforsaken reason it didn't auto-detect. Suddenly I'm munging around in `xrandr` to get my screens to work.
To its credit, all the major desktop distributions today are making real inroads to narrowing the scope of situations where that happens. This was a much larger concern in the past, where key aspects of the user experience were still in the category "There was a command-line tool written to control it and that's all you'll ever need, dammit."
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, have a cmd.exe terminal thing? Why isn't that harming Windows? The Windows Command Prompt's default experience is worse than most if not all terminals you find on Linux systems. Even in play TTY, you're bound to find that the shortcuts the author mentioned work like a charm. To make my cmd.exe bearable I am using https://chrisant996.github.io/clink tl;dr You're comparin…
> Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, have a cmd.exe terminal thing? Why isn't that harming Windows? That's because the overwhelming majority of Windows usage, administration, and programming can be done almost entirely without ever touching the command-line, from Explorer.exe, Task Manager, Edge, Media Player, Paint, and built-in ZIP handling to the huge list of MMC snap-ins[1], and Visual Studio 2022. >…
That does not match my experience, even if I also believed that myth.
At one time I had to install Windows Enterprise IoT on several kinds of embedded computers, all of which had various quirks.
The computers worked fine in Linux, from the first attempt to boot it, without the need to do anything special, but a customer wanted to have Windows on those.
After installing Windows, there have been a lot of problems, for instance Windows was unbelievably slow, because the SSD's had a very low writing speed, but they could not be replaced with decent SSD's, because the embedded computers were certified for certain applications only with their original components.
Making Windows usable on those computers has required a week of tuning and finding various workarounds by searching the Windows Knowledge Base and various Internet Forums, where many Windows users had the same complaints as me, but few were able to provide good advice about how to solve the problems.
I have been astonished to discover that for every workaround I was not able to find any way to do it in any graphic interface of Windows, but all workarounds required to use in a Cmd window some obscure Microsoft command-line utilities with a lot of magic command-line options, which I did not understand and I could not find in the official Windows Knowledge Base, but which were suggested as solutions on various Internet forums and indeed they worked as desired.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#50I have continually contented that the terminal is the single thing eternally condemning Linux to It's not just entering text. The entire experience is complicated. It's a Concorde jet cockpit[1] (with no labels too), when 95% of the population just wants to fly their drone around[2]. [1] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2566f4c91b894e4169d77... [2] https://media.thedroningcompany.com/images/tincy/WQZpC56vqMp...
Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, have a cmd.exe terminal thing? Why isn't that harming Windows? The Windows Command Prompt's default experience is worse than most if not all terminals you find on Linux systems. Even in play TTY, you're bound to find that the shortcuts the author mentioned work like a charm. To make my cmd.exe bearable I am using https://chrisant996.github.io/clink tl;dr You're comparin…
> Doesn't Windows, the most popular OS out there, ...
The most popular desktop OS. It is nowhere to be found in the Top 500 supercomputers, is nowhere to be found on smartphones, lags in the Cloud, is nowhere to be found in the billions of appliances, etc.
> Why isn't that harming Windows?
It is harming Windows. That horrible cmd.exe is one of the reason Windows lost in all the other markets and has hardly any market share there.