command line sorcery

[Trio3b]

Letter to the Linux Community,

 

The following is a critique and NOT a criticism of Linux or those who crunch thru lines of code for altruistic goals. This is really a request of those experienced in Linux to help those of us who are "textually" challenged. I intend to pursue Linux as far as I am able, but I hope that from a beginner's perspective, I can make some constructive observations about the Linux community.

 

Microsoft is not off the hook here either. I have a disagreement with; (1) MS licensing practices and interpretation about free markets, (2) the fact that Microsoft "knows what we need better than we do", changing each new OS release so that it is "better" than the last and (3) the fact that MS has had 20 years to develop a consumer friendly product and as far as I'm concerned, it is unbelievable to me that the installation techniques, file systems, utilities, and applications in each new "improved" version of Windows, came and went and came again in a jumble of incongruous forms that made these "improvements" either incompatible with the hardware, the previous OS version, or both. I don't know of one incident where taking invoicing templates out of MS Works was satisfying to any customer. I have NEVER heard anyone say......" I sure am glad that FAT 32 file systems aren't compatible with NTFS!" When was the last time you heard any customer thank MS for putting all the security holes into the OS under the guise of some remote registry utility for customer satisfaction, then scrambling to close those holes before a NEW virus got in? How about MS backup, the "wonder tool", that was supposed to make your life more productive? I must have spent weeks migrating important data from one PC to another with a "new improved" OS only to find out that the backup utilities or file systems were incompatible. That is time spent that MS can never replace. Anyway.........back to Linux.......

 

Remember the IBM 360 mainframe and Singer punchcard machines of the late '70s, or the Tandy TRS-80 of the early '80s? Those were amazing computers in their time. I spent a fair amount of time around these machines and some very smart people who used them, and I now marvel at the dedication and determination of myself and others who invested hours and sometimes days in the pursuit of having something....anything... being spit out on the terminal or the tape. As I recall those days fondly, I must come to the objective conclusion that most of the effort and energy expended to get these early "PC's" to spit out an answer surely was satisfying, but rarely justified the exorbitant amount of time spent in the computer lab.

What's the point? I have spent enough time on forums to hear Linux users make the pronouncement that if only you would dive into the inner workings of your PC, then you will treasure the satisfaction of learning your PC's innermost secrets. One of my favorite one liners handed out to Windows users who notice that certain chores in Linux should be easier is that sarcastic admonition... "well I guess SOME of us don't want to expand our skill set" or ?if you don't WANT to use your brain, go back to Windows? Please....enough! Let's grow up here!...That is true if your PC is mostly an end unto itself, and you have inordinate amounts of time to spend on PC's and the software leaning curve. If that's the case, I applaud you and your dedication.

If, however, your PC is a means to an end, a tool to accomplish other goals, to actually get some work done, like invoicing clients.... FOR MONEY (egad!), then I wonder about the survival of the desktop Linux OS. Like it or not we live in an "I want it now culture", and before we condemn our impatient nature, consider this.... Would you think so highly of driving that new car you just paid $23,000 for if it wouldn't run until you had understood and assembled the planetary gear cage assembly in order for the transmission to work? Maybe you would feel better about flying out to visit your family for Thanksgiving if Southwest Airlines asked one of the passengers to set the dump valve relief setting in the primary compressor stage of the jet engines before takeoff. The point is that the marketplace would never stand for a product like that, yet somehow we have been schnookered into believing that unless we understand the complete Hayes standardized modem command set or what a loopback interface is, then we can't truly be "one" with our PC.

 

The fact is that unless the computer itself is the end source of your fascination, then you DON'T need to know all of the inner workings of the PC to be productive. And in many cases, too much knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge (the learning curve) can actually be a hindrance to productivity. The effort spent on getting something to work MUST be factored in to get an accurate picture of whether or not a procedure is efficient. Being new to Linux, I have been generously offered lines and lines of commands to help me with problems. This information has many times taken hours to locate, to distill, to comprehend, and to type into a terminal.....over ...and over....and over again. Sorry to say, but up until this time, all of those issues have eventually been resolved with a couple of mouse clicks in the KDE desktop. Sadly, not one of these problems was fixed using the command line within a reasonable amount of time. It's not because the command line doesn't belong in the OS. It's just that the command line is given such a huge place of prominence that I think sometimes the lowly icon and mouse is overlooked as a productive alternative to the issue at hand. The Laws of Diminishing Returns dictate that at some point, the energy and time spent to accomplish certain tasks may become WAY out of proportion to the benefit derived, and in my experience, the command line interface sometimes falls prey to this very situation. It is very easy to allow our intellectual vanity to blind us to the fact that we may have just configured something in a 3 hour command line orgy when a mouse click or two would have sufficed. Yes, you solved it with CLI, but were you PRODUCTIVE in relation to the time spent ? There is nothing wrong with effort, but it has to produce some measureable results within a reasonable amount of time.

 

I'm getting the feeling that some people in the Linux community do not want the "point and click" mob to bring the GUI to the Linux playground. I believe that there are some in the Linux community who insist upon keeping the GUI away from those of us heathen who "just cannot comprehend the majesty? of the command line. This is unfortunate because eventually the desktop Linux OS, which I believe has immense potential on many fronts, will become an exclusionary OS and NOT an inclusive one. (Maybe that's their secret goal).

 

If the Linux community wants to share and saturate the planet with desktop Linux, then the CL brigade would do well to put aside their sniffling pride and realize that this OS will never gain widespread appeal for the desktop or even small business use if they believe that common tasks like file linking or network installations should be accomplished with hours and hours of research and CL tweaking of obscure, archaic and hard -to-remember command line heiroglyphics. Connecting a PC to the internet truly is a complex procedure, but so is running a hi-bypass jet engine, and the marketplace does not require us as end users to understand all the little 'turning gears' in order to be productive. Sorry to say, but given the choice between spending hours getting a modem driver to work thru CL tarring, unzipping, cd 'ing to the directory, typing makefile, make install, checking any dependencies, etc...etc...etc....or spending two minutes clicking through three or four dialogue boxes ... I must choose the latter. Sorry, but can you imagine a doctor's office or your local bank full of $10 an hour employees trying to command line their way through setting up your medical or financial records? And what about the small business owner who is trying to get away from the MS licensing stranglehold, only to find out that they have to invest massive resources teaching employees to do simple tasks with CL that should be done with the click of a mouse. Sorry ladies and gents, but it ain't gonna happen. No way, no how, not now, not ever. Not even downhill.......both ways. Yes, long live the command line......but offer it as an option to the desktop user. Yes, let the command line live large........ in the deep, dark, hallowed bowels of the mega corporations, where plaid-shirted engineers concoct their alchemy of Unix and Linux command-line sorcery.

 

But for goodness sake, if you're going to promote Linux as a more powerful, efficient, user- friendly companion to the PC, then please don't raise the command line to such an exhalted level that we point 'n click peons have no alternatives! Why do you think DOS and other similar interfaces withered away and evolved into pretty little pictures and handy clicky thingees in the first place? C'mon, let us dim-witted click-happy noodle brains join in the fun and let's make Linux not only powerful, but easier too!

 

Hope this helps you Linux gurus and mentors out there.

 

Viva la Linux

 

[moved from Talk-Talk by spinynorman]

[phunni]

Some good points - on the whole I agree with you. I do think that one of the advantages of the Linux/Unix approach is that it really does make life easier for the power user - editign a text file or entering a command is cleaner, safer and easier than playing with a registry for example. But I also agree that the normal PC user should not have to worry about this in order to get their work done.

 

Part of the problem imho is simply lack of industry support - there are so many tasks that wouldbe much easier to perform if there was better hardware/software support...

[Steve Scrimpshire]

I agree with you 100%, if only it were that easy. One has to deal with developers and distributors who don't make certain things that easy to do. They, in turn, have to deal with hardware manufacturers who won't release the source code to their drivers.

Until the day when distributors give us GUI tools we can trust, developers give us pkgs we can click and run and hardware manufacturers give us open-source drivers, your dream will remain a dream.

I don't fault you at all for feeling the way you do or expressing it here, BTW.

(Wow, you inspired me to be almost eloquent there.)

 

Guru-in-training

Edited February 23, 2005 by Steve Scrimpshire

[tyme]

Until the day when...hardware manufacturers give us open-source drivers

not even necessarily open source, but atleast ones that work and are easily installed!

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Until the day when...hardware manufacturers give us easily-installed linux drivers...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

There :P

[banjo]

A very entertaining rant.

 

I had a similar rant on this board a few weeks ago when I tried to correct a

simple bug in an application by upgrading the application. I was tossed into

a bog of alphabet soup and dependencies which, in the end, indicated that I

had to manually find and load hundreds of upgrades, or simply upgrade my

entire OS...... to fix a simple bug in one application.

 

I opted to find a workaround for the problem instead, which fortunately is possible

on Linux.

 

I am perfectly comfortable with the CLI, having used it on Unix systems

since 1978. However, I agree that it makes it nearly impossible to sell Linux

to a less experienced population as their desktop of choice. It is just too

terrifying.

 

I am 100% Linux at home now, and I will not go back to fnWindoze. But if the

Linux community wants to own the desktop, they have to make some improvements

in the way they do business, for example:

 

Make the admin tools more intuitive.

 

Make the apps easy to upgrade without having to upgrade the entire system.

 

Provide better documentation on how to use the apps.

 

Stop terrifying newbies with hideous jargon.

 

 

 

Just my two cents.

 

Linux rocks!

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[solarian]

A question: Do we really want a massive 'average joe' population on Linux?

Won't they ruin the community and priorities the distros have (security over ease, etc)?

 

p.s. I enjoy command line very much and I'd like to keep it. Thank You!

Edited February 23, 2005 by solarian

[banjo]

A question: Do we really want a massive 'average joe' population on Linux?

Won't they ruin the community and priorities the distros have (security over ease, etc)?

There is always that aspect of it. On some days, I would just as soon let the

wannabe's toil with the Blue Screen and let us remain a dark and fearsome band

of esoteric specialists......

 

But then, I fall into that bog of alphabet soup..... and sometimes.......just

sometimes..... I would like it to be just a tad easier to deal with.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[JeffSmdk]

Trio3b

 

I love your "letter to the Linux community", and agree with a lot of it.

 

Some points I'd like to add:

 

1. The CLI enthusiasts are much more common with distros like Slackware, Arch, pure Debian, and Gentoo. Those distros are aimed at the experienced Linux user who is comfortable with the command line. You made your post here at MandrakeUsers.org, a user forum for MandrakeLinux, which ironically is perhaps the most GUI oriented, newbie friendly, easy to use Distro out there. The Mandrake Control Center is as good as any GUI tool in Windows, perhaps better.

 

2. Distros like Mandrake, Mepis, Xandros, Linspire, Lycoris do as much as possible to make it easy for the newbie, and offer easy GUI tools. Most current Windows users, including Joe Sixpack and Aunt Tilly, can and do feel completely comfortable in jumping into using Xandros or Linspire.

 

3. Linux is improving daily in the desktop ease of use department. I've been amazed at the progess made in the three years I've been using Linux.

 

4. Both KDE and Gnome are improving at the speed of light, and in many cases are easier to use and offer more features than Windows.

 

5. Most newer Linux users are primarily GUI users (typically either KDE or Gnome), and only dive into the CL out of curiosity or for the learning experience (or in some cases to solve some problem that couldn't be solved with a GUI tool).

 

6. There is a sizable portion of the Linux community that use their computers as the end itself, rather than a means to an end, and really enjoy tweaking and getting under the hood (Arch, Gentoo, Slackware users come to mind). However, I'd say a majority now use Linux as a better alternative than Windows to get their daily work or play done.

 

7. It has been an evolutionary process for Linux to go from pure geek toy to something useful and fun for the masses. The progress has been gradual, but progress has been made, and continues to do so.

 

So, is Desktop Linux there yet for a majority of non technical users? Perhaps not. But it is darn close, and improving rapidly.

[Cannonfodder]

Your critique seems to be along the lines of one you would apply to a M$ OS. In Linux, you are not limited to one distribution or OS. You can focus your energies on a Distro that focuses on GUI. Or if you are a CLI type person, you can focus on a distro that is more about that kind of lifestyle. Basically, you are dealing with a bunch of mechanics who are really into the how and why rather than just getting the job done.

 

One suggestion is when asking for help, specify that you prefer a GUI approach based on your desire to get the job done. But if you are talking to mechanics, you are gonna gett waggy eyebrows for sure :)

[adamw]

Try working tech support. Help someone do something in a GUI way, then help them do it in a CLI way. You'd be surprised which is easier. I work for a local cableco; when our tech support guys are troubleshooting connections with customers, most of them use the Windows command line tools to do things like releasing and renewing IP addresses. Why? It's consistent between systems - doesn't matter how much they mess up their desktops - and it's much easier to instruct someone to run cmd then do ipconfig /renew and ipconfig /release than it is to instruct them how to click through 15,000 dialog boxes to achieve the same thing.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Why? It's consistent between systems - doesn't matter how much they mess up their desktops - and it's much easier to instruct someone to run cmd then do ipconfig /renew and ipconfig /release than it is to instruct them how to click through 15,000 dialog boxes to achieve the same thing.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That was one of the points I meant to mention. Even Mandrake, through it's different releases and different DEs...I know hte commandline tool is gonna be there and it's gonna be the same command no matter what...so rather than logging out and logging into KDE or Gnome, which might be a different version than you have and not have in the same place, I start by trying to tell you to 'go here'...if you can't find that on your own, it is just so much easier for me to tell you how to do it through cli.

[Trio3b]

Excellent level headed responses. There is hope!

adamw has it nailed.. take one newb problem and teach once in GUI and then then once in CL.

I'm trying desperately to get the Linux community to NOT act like MS......patting us on the head and telling us what we need. Yes, more options are good.....in theory...... but for the entry level PC user you start flying in a single engine Cessna, not in the F-18.