What is Linux and why do I care?Index
Linux is an Operating System. Other examples of Operating Systems are the Android O/S that runs your phone (a Linux derivative), Microsoft Windows, and Apple OSX.
The job of an Operating System is to manage the computer hardware so that multiple programs can use it. Examples of hardware that needs managing include memory, CPU, and peripherals. You don’t want one program to cause another program to crash, and you want to share memory among several programs at the same time.
The Linux operating system and its derivatives are found in very high-profile places such as Android phones, Google, Facebook, and the New York Stock Exhange. If you want to work with leading-edge technology, you need to know how to work with Linux.
Command Line vs. GUI: Power Users need more than GUIIndex
Sysadmin motto: “Anything worth doing will be done more than once.”
This is a short note I wrote on why even modern GUIs just don’t have the power needed to handle repeated tasks. The original article appeared in the Ottawa Linux User Group http://oclug.on.ca/archives/oclug/2006-October/051531.html whose mailing List you can find here http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/oclug
A GUI user wrote:
There are plenty of examples. Take sending a message by e-mail for example. No complex menu navigaion is required for that in a GUI, such as Evolution, for example. You simply click on “New” fill in the form with appropriate data, and click send.
Okay, I just sent a file to one user. Now how do I repeat that and only have to change the userid, or only the file name, without having to “fill in the form” again (possibly making mistakes or forgetting exactly what I filled out in the previous form)?
In a command line, I back up one line (one keystroke) and change “user1” to “user2” or “file1” to “file2” and push return. If I realize I want to do this a lot, I save that line in a script file and pass the userid or file name in as a parameter, so I only need type “./mailusers user3” or “./mailfiles file3”.
Say it’s tomorrow and I can’t remember exactly which files I sent to whom. My command line history tells me exactly what I sent and to whom and allows me to repeat what I did exactly, only changing the little bits I want changed.
Say it’s next month and I realize I’m always sending these emails to the same people, so I collect the command lines that do that and put them all into one script file that makes it all happen: “./doall”
Say it’s next year and I realize I’m always doing these things at the same time every month, so I put an entry in my crontab that will automatically run my “doall” script on the 15th of every month.
Say I want my friend in Slovenia to be able to do exactly what I do. I send him my script file.
What existing GUI lets me do that sort of thing? To summarize:
automatically saves the last thing I did
gives me keyword-searchable history of what I did
lets me edit any little piece of what I did and repeat it
allows me to save and parametrize what I did so that in future I only have to specify the little bits that change
lets me group a common series of things I do into a repeatable script so that it’s easy to do all those things in that order
lets me run anything unattended (via crontab or other background scheduling system)
lets me pass my saved and customized actions to another user, who can also customize and modify them further
You’re talking about taking an action that you can repeat later with the same parameters, or parameters you can easily change. So, write the software so that it can save and retrieve parameters for a future session without using a complex menu.
My command line doesn’t require me to rewrite any applications. I can parametrize and run all the applications unchanged.
What existing GUI lets me do these things, all of which I do a lot?
“Anything worth doing will be done more than once.”
References:
http://osnews.com/story.php/6282/The-Command-Line--The-Best-Newbie-Interface/page1/
In the Beginning was the Command LineIndex
Back in the days of the command-line interface, users were all Morlocks who had to convert their thoughts into alphanumeric symbols and type them in, a grindingly tedious process that stripped away all ambiguity, laid bare all hidden assumptions, and cruelly punished laziness and imprecision. Then the interface-makers went to work on their GUIs, and introduced a new semiotic layer between people and machines. People who use such systems have abdicated the responsibility, and surrendered the power, of sending bits directly to the chip that’s doing the arithmetic, and handed that responsibility and power over to the OS. This is tempting because giving clear instructions, to anyone or anything, is difficult. We cannot do it without thinking, and depending on the complexity of the situation, we may have to think hard about abstract things, and consider any number of ramifications, in order to do a good job of it. For most of us, this is hard work. We want things to be easier. How badly we want it can be measured by the size of Bill Gates’s fortune. […]
In other words, the first thing that Apple’s hackers had done when they’d got the MacOS up and running–probably even before they’d gotten it up and running–was to re-create the Unix interface, so that they would be able to get some useful work done. At the time, I simply couldn’t get my mind around this, but: as far as Apple’s hackers were concerned, the Mac’s vaunted Graphical User Interface was an impediment, something to be circumvented before the little toaster even came out onto the market.
– Neal Stephenson, “Cryptonomicon”, “In the beginning was the Command Line” http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/publink/etexts/stephenson.txt
Author:
| Ian! D. Allen, BA, MMath - idallen@idallen.ca - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/ Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom: http://eff.org/ and have fun: http://fools.ca/
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