beat a dead horse

[robghealey]

I know that this topic has been run more times than I care to see again, but I feel the need to state the obvious anyway!

Synaptic is the best package management tool out there. I love it clearly more than yum or yumex....

Thanks for allowing and tolerating me to voice my opinoin too!!!

[salmankhilji]

I hope that we get rid of the command line crap soon in Linux

[Zigzagcom]

:) I can't type worth a crap, but I am making an effort to learn the command line.
Why? 'Cause it's fun, you have a chance of learning how to deal with a whole bunch of other issues, such as configuring routers and switches. People that can type are to a large degree
also programmers, although I have the feeling that many hunt and peck just better than us.
Plus it is good for spelling. :D ...oh, and you can impress your girlfriend.

[crackers]

I hope that we get rid of the command line crap soon in Linux
Well, considering Microsoft is putting the command-line back into Windows, obviously they - and Apple, with OSX - seem to feel there's some value in it. If you have a normal-enough (for some nebulous value of "normal") system, you shouldn't have to worry about it for 99% of the time. The wife barely even knows it's there - the only time she uses it is to ssh to my box to run a program that I have and she doesn't (there's reasons for that).

[Jman]

You have the choice of the apt-get command or the synaptic GUI, and that's how I like it.

[jayemef]

I know that this topic has been run more times than I care to see again, but I feel the need to state the obvious anyway!

Synaptic is the best package management tool out there. I love it clearly more than yum or yumex....

Thanks for allowing and tolerating me to voice my opinoin too!!!
Opinion heard. Perhaps you could provide some reasoning though, so that others know where you're coming from and why you like it.

I hope that we get rid of the command line crap soon in Linux
The command line interface has its advantages. The most obvious is speed. It's much faster to type in a quick command and execute it rather than wait for a GUI to load. Aliasing/linking/history/tab completion/etc only make this more true.

CLI is more uniform as well. I've found that it's much better to give tips/help from the command line then to cater to specific desktop environment/window managers, which can have very different interfaces. With the command line, anyone can open it up, enter the commands I've listed, and achieve the same results.

Also, looking from the other side, a GUI can only do what it has been programmed to do. Thus, if it's missing a feature, you're screwed. From the command line, with the shell and built-in utilities, you can get much closer to the hardware and basic functions.

GUI's are great when you don't know the command line - good news for beginners - but the command line is a vital part. I wouldn't trade it away for anything.

[greatscot]

..but the command line is a vital part. I wouldn't trade it away for anything.

I agree and, although I don't use CLI as much as I probably should, I can see its advantages. For instance, if I want to backup my entire /home/username directory to a .tar.gz file with the date and time of the backup in the filename and move that backup to another directory, I simply type:

tar -czf /home/storage/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`-backup.tar.gz /home/username

and the system does it all for me while I go on and do other things. I am not sure how many mouse clicks and directory changes this would involve using the GUI in Konqueror, but I am sure I would have to perform several seperate functions (plus waiting for the tarball to be created and packed before being allowed to rename it with the date and time) to achieve the same goal.

I am glad the CLI is there when I need it :)

[luibh]

I hope that we get rid of the command line crap soon in Linux

imho, the command-line and gui are equal in importance. there are times when i cannot get something to function through a gui, but pull up a terminal session and, bobs your uncle, things get done.

back to that poor horse, i like synaptic much more than yum, but in all honesty i havent used yum much (or apt-get without synaptic for that matter). but this is one situation where i think a gui is much easier and does the same thing.

[jayemef]

To be fair, you can't really compare yum with synaptic. One is graphically driven; the other, command line driven. For comparisons sake, look at
yum vs apt
yumex (and other yum overheads like it) vs synaptic

[bob]

All in all, why stick with just one? I use yum to update most of the time, Synaptic to see quickly see what packages are available from my pre-selected repositories and yumex to quickly search ALL the repositories for hard-to-find packages. Command line is quick and can operate in the background in a minimized fashion, plus giving me feedback on how things are progressing. Linux is all about options, contrasted to Win XP which force-feeds the updates with only one way to do it, and relies on the search bars to find new programs.

[GospelOfLinux]

Don't you touch my command line. :mad: I'll have to send my 16 killer bunnies and thier buddy, the moldy pickle, to rough you up. :eek:

Seriously, I'm all for GUI extentions of system process, but they are not as flexible as their command line conunterparts. They are also harder to create and maintain. I find that the command line was worth my time to learn since I now can make my system work how I need it to much more effectively. I recently had to install Windows on a machine and boy did I miss a strong command line as I got the thing up and running post-install.

[sailor]

I am with Bob on this one...with each new install I run yum from command line to update all...then to later add individual apps I use Apt/Synaptic....

[james_in_denver]

Just because you might not understand all of the shell commands and how to use them, don't bash it (no pun intended).

I can move around the filesystem FAR faster from the command line than anybody could possibly hope to with a GUI, that includes moving files, moving multiple files, compiling source, editing configuration files, installing/removing RPM packages, and checking out log files.

What is faster than "grep error /var/log/messages" to see all of the errors report by your system? While you are navigating to the folder, I've already seen all the problems on my system, (oops, looks like smartd says I need a new disk!).

Seriously though, the command line is fast, powerful, and efficient.

But if your a noob, or not a good typist, or really don't care to understand some of the Linux concepts, then you can always just stick with the GUI.....

[Shadow Skill]

I don't think the windows CLI is weak as much as it is a forgotten art, I'm sure if you actually knew what the proper commands were you could do much of what we do freely with Linux. With that said I have only ever needed the windows CLI for some obscure networking related commands it was a shame that the help did not mention those commands. I am very glad my brother took a job that required that he actually know these sorts of commands in the past. :)

With that said I much prefer Linux terminal emulators, much prettier and easier to work with. /me loves bashing his system into obedience [not that it always obeys me. hehe]

[salmankhilji]

Just because you might not understand all of the shell commands and how to use them, don't bash it (no pun intended).

I can move around the filesystem FAR faster from the command line than anybody could possibly hope to with a GUI, that includes moving files, moving multiple files, compiling source, editing configuration files, installing/removing RPM packages, and checking out log files.

What is faster than "grep error /var/log/messages" to see all of the errors report by your system? While you are navigating to the folder, I've already seen all the problems on my system, (oops, looks like smartd says I need a new disk!).

Seriously though, the command line is fast, powerful, and efficient.

But if your a noob, or not a good typist, or really don't care to understand some of the Linux concepts, then you can always just stick with the GUI.....

YOU are fast using the command line crap. Yeah I know. But only YOU are fast using the CLI because you are a geek. An average user like me does not remember (and have hard time memorizing the commands). Thats why GUI were invented. Why don't to stop using Linux at all for a period of 3 years. After 3 years, come back and tell me how many commands you can still remember. Lets consider the use case of updating software on your computer.

1) User 1 has Synaptic installed. He goes in, select from the menu, Synaptic and clicks somehwhere in the menu to do an update

2) User 2 first types "yum --upgrade"....oops did not work....then tries "yum upgrade"....still does not work.....then does "man yum" and is presented with a 1024 pages long and complicated man page. After spending 15 minutes on the man page, the user finally realizes that the command was "yum update"....ah....now user 2 issues the command with realizing that user 1 is already done with the update.

You see .... that is what the problem is with CLI....not having good memory. 18 year old college students have much better memory than a 30 or a 40 year old professional engineer. Thats why CLI crap is only suitable for college-going geeks.

Now tell me without looking at a man page which one is correct.

ar cqs my.o yours.o
ar --cqs my.o yours.o
ar -cqs -o lib.a my.o yours.o

Can't remember. Sorry I have to look at a man page and waste 20 minutes before I can come up with the correct syntax. I am not a geek and cannot recall what the exact syntax is.

[jtang613]

YOU are fast using the command line crap. Yeah I know. But only YOU are fast using the CLI because you are a geek. An average user like me does not remember (and have hard time memorizing the commands). Thats why GUI were invented. Why don't to stop using Linux at all for a period of 3 years. After 3 years, come back and tell me how many commands you can still remember. Lets consider the use case of updating software on your computer.
<snip>
You see .... that is what the problem is with CLI....not having good memory. 18 year old college students have much better memory than a 30 or a 40 year old professional engineer. Thats why CLI crap is only suitable for college-going geeks.
<snip>
I am not a geek and cannot recall what the exact syntax is.
Sooooo.... You don't like the CLI -- Therefore it should be abolished altogether? Is that what you are saying?

I have a better idea. If you don't like it, don't use it. There are a great many of us who DO use the CLI a lot. In fact I wouldn't be using Linux without it. It's pros far outweigh its cons.

BTW: It always puts a smile on my face to see someone in a Linux forum call someone else a "geek".

Jason

[bander26]

I don't think it's a matter of age. I'm a 70 year old scientist and back in the soup after 2 years of retirement using Unix, Win XP etc. I find GUI and CLI both useful. I'm also helping a young post-doc by buying software that is GUI because he doesn't like the CLI software that I already have for manipulating data. He would rather point at an icon than type FT(for fourier transform). I'm sympathetic because I understand that he's more interested in his particular chemisty problem than the spectroscopy. My view don't limit either CLI or GUI users.

[Shadow Skill]

You do realize that in reality you simply can't not use the command line not with the way the gui config tools are. [Thuroughly broken.] I don't mind using the CLI myself either but I'm not going to pretend its a good thing that system administration is so damned reliant on it. I would hope the CLI stops being the first [and very often only effective] means of administering a system. I know most of my friends would not want to take a look at a CLI to do things like burning a cd or dvd watch a movie or even updating the system.

[Thomas Howard]

I use the CLI as little as possible, but I still accept that I need to use it for some things, say, when the GUI breaks, or isnt effective enough. But I cant do much in it apart from changing permissions, moving, deleting and copying files and making symbollic links without resorting to reading the manual pages.

As for Synaptic vs the Yum GUI interfaces, all the Yum intefaces, and yum itself, are far too slow for my patience to cope with, with the GUI interfaces for Yum being slower than Yum itself. They just take far too long before actually doing anything for my tastes. Synaptic, on the other hand, is much faster and has more options for sorting the packages.

[Shadow Skill]

You know I have really begun to noitce that with fc4 yum IS slow, and no its not just buggy cause its a test release, smartrpm for example is much faster than yum, I think alot of it has to do with yum constantly wanting to rebuild the cache.

[dorian]

Hello,

i use CLI more and more, cause i find it convenient to just type what i want. For administration of servers it works much faster than login via Xserver (and X [and windows for thas part] is just a waste of CPU-time on servers, 'cause just admins use it and the server should work for its users not for its admins! But that is just my 2 eurocent opinion.). I just hate if some GUI-Interface hides Information, if i use a GUI and something goes wrong i don't understand, i normally suspect that the relevant error messages were hidden from me by the GUI (this is also true for Windows!) and i start doing all again in CLI (how paranoid can i get? :rolleyes: ). About 80% of my linux problems are resollved that way...

On the other hand, there are actually some GUI-applications i use and trust (i am not that paranoid, or?). Both forms have their merrits, but if i encounter problems CLI just works better for me.

When it comes to using yumex or synaptic, i usually have a CLI open, so that i install new software using CLI, but if i want to check my installation for unwanted packageges i use yumex (or synaptic on my debian systems, even so i use aptitude quite a lot instead of synaptic, but that is not really hardcore CLI, i think). The time yum takes to start is annoying, but this fact helps me not install to much and think about what i do before installtion (which is actually quite a good thing :cool:, i mean thinking before acting could have prevented at least some wars). Therefore i am not too annoyed, but this is just my point of view, which will probably not translate too well to the rest of the world (that is fact that i am quite proud of, cause i shows some individualism :p ).

Dorian

[RastaVari]

salmankhilji wrote "Thats because you are a geek!"

no its because the effort is made to learn CLI in order to have a more powerful & dynamic interface. its not necessary or course, but then if you NEED the pointy clicky gui ALL THE TIME and have no interest in the benifits of the command line or learning linux then why not stick to windows.

and then you can wait for fixes that microsoft write (that may just mess up your pc )
instead of talented programmers like james_in_denver contributing, finding or fixing bugs &
CONTRIBUTING TO THE COMMUNITY

so instead of calling someone who has made an effort "a geek" maybe just admit that your STUPID or LAZY, but maybe you are one of those people who go abroad on holiday & expect locals to be able to speak YOUR language "you mean they dont speak english!"

derrr... i cant use it so it must be s**t

[BandC]

I like both GUI and CLI. I also use both. My view is both should be available for people to choose. However, GUI needs to be good enough that someone doesn't have to use the CLI if they do not wish. If CLI is the only viable way of doing something, then I think there is a problem (for a widely used / mainstream operating system that is). You wouldn't want to alienate any less knowledgable users.

[sailor]

salmankhilji, I take it you didn't have a computer back in the days of DOS(no GUI)...us old folks started out that way, we are comfortable with it and can see its advantages...
You are making comments based upon your inexperience with that kind of environment. But answer this one question: What are you gonna do if your GUI fails to open?
You are lost, I am not.
That alone is the main reason for learning it and sometimes using it. Think of it as a back up to your gui.
If geek means I am smart, so be it. and you?