Live data from Hacker News

You Don't Need a GUI

github.com

221–230 of 439 posts

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#222
> $ cp readme.txt documents/

sure, works fine

in my ~, I have the follwing files:

'FOPC_0211237F_4563(1).pdf'

FOPC_0211237F_4563.pdf

FOPC_0251215K_4563.pdf

FOPC_0381912X_4143.pdf

FOPC_0381912X_4154.pdf

FOPC_0755890V_282.pdf

FOPC_0755890V_283.pdf

FOPC_0755890V_284.pdf

FOPC_0755890V_285.pdf

FOPC_0755890V_286.pdf

FOPC_0921204J_4652.pdf

FOPC_0952259P_58.pdf

FOPC_9830445S_4142.pdf

Even with the very good zsh autocompletion, I'd definitely be faster with a GUI in practice, if only because my file manager has thumbnails and preview and it's impossible to remember which file is which without glancing at it if you want to copy it

anyways, this repo is big elitist bullshit which reads like it was written by edgy teenagers who just discovered bash

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#223

Does anyone still use Midnight commander? (mc from the command line). I think its falling out of favor, but I think a lot of people don't know about it. Its a clone or the old Norton Commander which uses a termnal (curses based software) to create a kind of file browsing /copying/ moving tool. I like it because I know it, and its easy to browse through directories and veiw the files using a keyboard. A breif guide wi…

It also has a built in editor that behaves like old the DOS text editors from qbasic / Turbo Pascal. I think it's more intuitive than nano, especially for Windows users.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#224
post #183

I don't really like bc. Just seems so old-school, and typing things like "100.0 / 34.2" gives you "2". Is there really nothing better? I feel like someone has to have made some new hotness in Rust by now.

> Is there really nothing better?

I use iPython or GHCi for my calculator needs.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#225

Not everyone is spending most of their time in a terminal already. I'm not going to context switch to a terminal and move my hand off my mouse just to be able to type a command that I could have issued with a couple of mouse clicks in the window I'm already in. If I'm already on the command line, yeah. I'll probably do more stuff in the command line. I just hate to switch input modalities to feel like I'm being more…

[deleted]

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because that's way faster and more convenient than double clicking on an icon. It is if you happen to have both hands on the keyboard. That said, I usually navigate a GUI file explorer using the keyboard too, so pressing Enter to open a file is even faster. (This comment was submitted entirely using the keyboard.)

This comment was submitted entirely using the keyboard How did you do that? Using a specific browser extension? I am looking for ways to use my browser with keyboard only.

Not GP, but I'm currently using Vimium under Firefox. I've also heard of Vimperator and Tridactyl but never tried them.

If you're willing to ditch the mainstream browsers, there's Nyxt. For browsing static wikis from a tty, there's ELinks.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#227
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or man -k "disk space"

disk space: nothing appropriate.

on Ubuntu 18.04 this is what I got

$ apropos "disk space"

df (1) - report file system disk space usage

$ man -k "disk space"

df (1) - report file system disk space usage

and

$ man -k "disk usage"

docker-system-df (1) - Show docker disk usage

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#228

GUI 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…

A fair part of what I do includes ERP implementation project work. Way back, when TUI/keyboard centric ERP system dominance was starting to give way to GUI/mouse centric ERP systems, I was working with one client where replacing a TUI with GUI based system. One measure we made during the project was the impact to new employee training time and we saw significant reductions in training time due to the sorts of discove…

What about a system that shows actions in a GUI as a list of equivalent plain text commands. New users would have the discoverability of a GUI while being able to see what goes on command-wise. With time they would be able to convert to plain-text commands and scripting for increased efficency.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#229
Misses the point. I read a lot of these and tried the alternatives, and I can say that the alternatives require more mental energy to use and don't save appreciable time, so I won't use them. I've only got so much RAM, and the GUI makes information extremely easy to digest. People say "STOP using Twitter, use IRC" but those people also miss the point.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#230
post #206
post #5

Most 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…

I am the opposite, haven't used a GUI file manager in...15 years? I am most certainly not "already in it". (Ok, with the exception of wanting to look at a bunch of images in thumbnail mode. Then I launch a GUI file manager.) The shell is where I "am" and launching a GUI seems more cumbersome than typing the command. In fact reading this post made me realize that using the terminal for file operations is not as common…

Yeah, between emacs and the shell I do 90% of my file manipulation in “CLI” environments.

Even when I use Finder, I use it like a CLI: typing and shortcuts for everything and minimal clicking.

The only exception is that I occasionally drop files, urls and documents from GUI applications into iTerm, rather than type out the whole thing.

Post reply on HN