Re:The Command Line Challenge.
by DanBC on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @05:37AM
(#3675016)
You point out that you're familiar with the command line, thus this article isn't really for you.
For people who haven't used CLI before; or who don't have much experience of the command line: it makes some things about the Unix way a bit clearer. One program does one task, but does it well. You pass the output from one command into the input of another. Input and output are text, because text is universal.
These are important powerful concepts and I'm disappointed that they've largely been forgotten in the GUI world.
I'm also baffled that my vastly powerful computer has areas of lagginess when grinding through some seemingly trivial things. A pure-CLI trivially-easy-to-install distro[1] isn't going to happen, but imagine the use people could get from all those old computers which are not coping with modern OSs.
[1] Linux from scratch definitely does not count. TinyCore doesn't really count. Arch sort of comes close, but would need to be i) Much easier to install and ii) have a specific repository for CLI / Curses / etc software.
For people who haven't used CLI before; or who don't have much experience of the command line: it makes some things about the Unix way a bit clearer. One program does one task, but does it well. You pass the output from one command into the input of another. Input and output are text, because text is universal.
These are important powerful concepts and I'm disappointed that they've largely been forgotten in the GUI world.
I'm also baffled that my vastly powerful computer has areas of lagginess when grinding through some seemingly trivial things. A pure-CLI trivially-easy-to-install distro[1] isn't going to happen, but imagine the use people could get from all those old computers which are not coping with modern OSs.
[1] Linux from scratch definitely does not count. TinyCore doesn't really count. Arch sort of comes close, but would need to be i) Much easier to install and ii) have a specific repository for CLI / Curses / etc software.