Terminal Love

[PCessna]

On a operating system level, do you love the terminal, I do, I'm getting close xD

[rune0077]

Love is sure a strong (and somewhat disturbing) word to use about software. I try to avoid the terminal as much as possible, but when it's needed, we get by with each other without issues.

[PCessna]

Love is sure a strong (and somewhat disturbing) word to use about software. I try to avoid the terminal as much as possible, but when it's needed, we get by with each other without issues.

I don't quite agree about anything you said, but awesome :O

[thebinaryblob]

Oh yeah, Terminal and I go way back, we used to have fun with my dad's computer back in the days of windows 95, I didn't see Terminal again until just last year (when I switched to Linux) and we've been hanging out a lot since.

[Barrucadu]

The terminal's great :D

[jdong]

My daily workflow almost always necessitates a UNIX terminal. There's some tasks that are done much more elegantly and efficiently at a terminal, and other tasks where a GUI is more well-suited. I can't say I prefer one over another 100% of the time, but rather I use both.

For new users, I do suggest finding a terminal walkthrough and seeing what it has to offer, rather than assuming it's too difficult to use or brushing it off as some archaic useless interface.

[Canis familiaris]

For new users, I do suggest finding a terminal walkthrough and seeing what it has to offer, rather than assuming it's too difficult to use or brushing it off as some archaic useless interface.
You mean: http://linuxcommand.org/

[emshains]

I love to use the terminal, because its a hell of a lot faster, and easier than doing everything "by gui". But my love is nothing when its put against my fathers passion for the shell. When he boots up the machine he chooses recovery mode just because he loves the command-line.

[FuturePilot]

My daily workflow almost always necessitates a UNIX terminal. There's some tasks that are done much more elegantly and efficiently at a terminal, and other tasks where a GUI is more well-suited. I can't say I prefer one over another 100% of the time, but rather I use both.

For new users, I do suggest finding a terminal walkthrough and seeing what it has to offer, rather than assuming it's too difficult to use or brushing it off as some archaic useless interface.

I agree with that. :)

[rune0077]

I love to use the terminal, because its a hell of a lot faster, and easier than doing everything "by gui".

I never understood how people say it's faster. A few mouse clicks is much faster for me than having to type in a path or a series of commands. I always considered it the other way around, and that the main advantage of GUI (other than the visualization) was that it sped things up. I guess it depends what you're doing.

[sisco311]

I don't trust GUI apps.
:roll:

[spupy]

What I like about the terminal is that it gives you better feedback. Many new users say things like: "Pidgin crashes/doesn't start. What to do? Plz thx"
Open a terminal and see the feedback! The first step in finding out what is going on.

I don't trust spinning mouse cursors and blinkenlights. :) But I do try to avoid the terminal to a certain extent.

[Nepherte]

I pretty much use it full time now, merging to console based applications. Once you get the hang of it, they tend to be more productive (for me). It's very useful to know how to use the terminal when you're gui doesn't work anymore.

[dje]

my first experience of a command line was on an acorn archimedes with risc os when i was about 6. you pressed F12 and a command line appeared underneath the taskbar and i thought "this is so cool, why click things when you can type them" :KS

rock on terminals :guitar:

[y6FgBn)~v]

The degree of precision control it provides is irreplaceable.

[billgoldberg]

I love to use the terminal, because its a hell of a lot faster, and easier than doing everything "by gui". But my love is nothing when its put against my fathers passion for the shell. When he boots up the machine he chooses recovery mode just because he loves the command-line.

Wouldn't it be easier to remove the graphical login?

That way you always boot into the command line.

[original_jamingrit]

I never understood how people say it's faster.

When you get into things like regular expressions and globbing, you can rename a large amount of files with only one or two commands. If you understand a certain configuration utility well enough, using it is often faster than wading through a bunch of configuration windows and popups. Doing trivial things like moving one file to another folder takes about just as much energy.

Plus, it just kind of feels convenient to not have to move your hand from keyboard to mouse a lot.

[doorknob60]

Love...well not really but I couldn't live without it so I guess I do...but not in a weird way or anything :lolflag:

[gabhla]

Yeah, "love" is a tad strong. But, I get along very well with the command line. I actually prefer using it.

[gn2]

Almost never use the CLI, tend to view it as a useful repair facility and nothing else.
Nice to have it available but it's not how I like to interact with a PC.

[jdong]

I never understood how people say it's faster. A few mouse clicks is much faster for me than having to type in a path or a series of commands. I always considered it the other way around, and that the main advantage of GUI (other than the visualization) was that it sped things up. I guess it depends what you're doing.

Tends to depend on the nature of the task. If I have a folder with 40000 .MP3 files that need to be renamed to .mp3, or need to split a bunch of "category - filename.txt" into category/filename.txt, it's a matter of a single line or two line command at the CLI and probably an hour of clicking around in a GUI. On the other hand, if you're organizing a bunch of photos by content and they're all named DSC_1234.JPG, the CLI is next to useless in comparison to a GUI file manage with thumbnails.

You're absolutely right, whether or not the GUI or CLI is faster is very dependent on the task at hand.

[david_lynch]

I use the terminal for both local and remote system adminstration tasks. For instance it's much faster for me to type

vi /etc/network/interfaces

than to navigate through all the pointing and clicking of menus to do the same thing with a GUI.

I use the GUI a lot, when it makes things faster, but I would consider it a big handicap if I had to give up the terminal.

To each his own :lolflag:

[rune0077]

Tends to depend on the nature of the task. If I have a folder with 40000 .MP3 files that need to be renamed to .mp3, or need to split a bunch of "category - filename.txt" into category/filename.txt, it's a matter of a single line or two line command at the CLI and probably an hour of clicking around in a GUI. On the other hand, if you're organizing a bunch of photos by content and they're all named DSC_1234.JPG, the CLI is next to useless in comparison to a GUI file manage with thumbnails.

You're absolutely right, whether or not the GUI or CLI is faster is very dependent on the task at hand.

Yeah, I think I just do more of the things that are easier with the GUI.

Terminal usage for me often just boils down to installing new software, and getting error outputs.

[FranMichaels]

Love it too. I like to write and use small bash scripts to download/update and compile and install bleeding edge versions of various applications right from the devs' repos. :D

I have to admit its fun to watch all that stuff run across the screen, and pushes whatever machine I'm on to its max (try passing make -j2 if you have a dual-core)

As long as it makes a series of somewhat daunting tasks done doable with a simple command and I can sit back and relax; I will always love the terminal!

[lisati]

The word "love" has a delightful (?) ambiguity to it - to some it's an emotion, to others it's a decision.

As for the terminal (or any CLI), it depends on what you're trying to do.

[rune0077]

The word "love" has a delightful (?) ambiguity to it - to some it's an emotion, to others it's a decision.


And to some it's like a tumor that just keeps growing no matter how much they want it removed ... erh, what were we talking about? :)

[bobbocanfly]

I *always* have a terminal open (well actually 3 because I use Terminator). I use it for everything: IRC, File manager, all development (except actual editing which is handled by gedit, which I am also addicted to) and just anything else that can be done easily without a GUI.

[Barrucadu]

(try passing make -j2 if you have a dual-core)

I've always been told the rule of thumb was however many cores you have + 1, so a dual core would be -j3.

[Kabezon]

Passionate lovers; that's what we are.

[mrgnash]

The terminal and I are passionately involved, to be sure :lolflag: When I'm not using Vim and LaTeX, I'm using Vimperator, which gives me access to terminal commands from Firefox anyway. And for file management, I wouldn't dream of using a GUI, except in the sort of case cited by jdong.

[jdong]

I've always been told the rule of thumb was however many cores you have + 1, so a dual core would be -j3.

The thought behind cores+1 is that if you just use -j2 (two jobs), there's time when make is trying to figure out which new job to spawn that leaves one or both cores idle. Using a few more jobs than the number of cores ensures that all CPUs are busy working, at the slight cost of scheduling overhead and additional RAM resource usage.

[jespdj]

I always have a terminal window open. Typing commands just works faster than mousing around all the time. I'm not a Unix shell wizard though - I just know the basics.

[PCessna]

I always have a terminal window open. Typing commands just works faster than mousing around all the time. I'm not a Unix shell wizard though - I just know the basics.

I always have a temrinal shortcut somewhere on my panel, desktop, etc. lol

[handy]

Romeo & Juliet!

[Sprut1]

"im abit new but liking it"

Thats me alright, the terminal gets more and more usefull every day!