Linux: GUI vs. Command Line

[hermouche]

Hy everybody everywhere;

Two modes for users to interact with the computer, GUI (Graphical User Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface).

CLI and GUI are essentially complementary modes of interacting with the computer !!!
GUI consumes too much CPU and memory !!!
Xwindows presents a really big security risk...load it and you are asking to be hacked !!!
Using CLI is faster. A keyboard is pretty much all you need here, much faster than all that clicking, scrolling, clicking some more, scrolling some more, and more typing, then clicking.
Does the CLI afraid you !!!

red

[pwca]

Oh this is going to start a flame war.. I can see it coming now.

[brunson]

Xwindows presents a really big security risk...load it and you are asking to be hacked !!!

Where did you dig up that garbage?

[hermouche]

Just some more reflexions :
Using GUI is faster. Picking and choosing icons sure beats trying to remember and typing command lines.
GUI consumes too much CPU and memory.....With newer and more powerful computers, that is not a problem. And its benefits are well worth it.
Xwindows is progress compared to the CLI.

[hermouche]

> pwca
Just want people's comment about the subject.
I am in a situation where most people don't like the CLI, or are afraid, mostly microsoft peoples !
why and does CLI is complex, hard or what is the real terms for this rejection !!

red

[brunson]

I use CLI almost exclusively. I administrate boxes deployed all over the world, most of which I haven't even seen before. GUI is sometimes easier and sometimes faster, but almost impossible to automate without ridiculous kludges.

Reproducibility is a key indicator in the maturity of a process. GUI configuration rarely is part of that.

[metatron]

I try to use a healthy mix of both.

[viperskunk]

Agreed. A mixture of both is certainly more desirable. For stuff like installing a package or updating a system, yum on the CLI is so much more efficient.
But for certain desktop customization/ configuration etc. a GUI is certainly better than remembering tons of codes/scripts.

[RupertPupkin]

With console framebuffers in Linux, the only thing missing from the CLI nowadays is a web browser with graphics (Lynx is good, and is very fast, but no graphics ). CLI has everything else pretty much covered.

[aleph]

@hermouche

X Windows a security threat? I don't think so. It's just another application. You can run it securely or insecurely.

The CLI is like language. You can build up idioms that are extremely reflexive, expressive and reusable. The Unix philosophy is to reduce things to a set of "atoms" and use shell/pipeline/etc to work together (forming idioms). So you have nice commands like cat `cat filelist` (where filelist is a file contain file paths). However, like a language you'll have to follow a lot of rules.

No, you won't die without language, but you probably won't live very well.

[marcrblevins]

I prefer to use CLI for all configurations. And I share that knowledge on this forum, cause I have no plan to look for whichever Desktop you use to fix the same issue.

Sticking with CLI. Its quicker if you have fast fingers.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by hermouche

Hy everybody everywhere;

Two modes for users to interact with the computer, GUI (Graphical User Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface).

CLI and GUI are essentially complementary modes of interacting with the computer !!!
GUI consumes too much CPU and memory !!!

Define "too much". CPU and memory are very cheap these days and there is a Linux GUI available even for old/low-end systems.

Xwindows presents a really big security risk...load it and you are asking to be hacked !!!
Wrong ! Aleph is right (and insightful) - apparently you are not aware of how X11 works.


Using CLI is faster. A keyboard is pretty much all you need here, much faster than all that clicking, scrolling, clicking some more, scrolling some more, and more typing, then clicking.
Does the CLI afraid you !!!

Yes the CLI is sufficient, BUT the GUI can be very powerful too. This depends on the task. I find some things much easier in a shell, and others much easier in a window. It really is CONVENIENT to see the directory contents and dbl-click to start the app. Do you really want to hunt through 5 levels of directories and to see you music files, then start then manually - or isn't the Amarok interface a lot cleaner ? Similarly Lynx and the emacs internal browser "work" but they are fundamentally crippled. Yes the GUI can display a lot of information faster/clearer than the xterm+bash. OTOH I use complex bash lines all the time to find and view what I want - that's better than any GUI.

I might have agreed with your opinion 25 years ago - graphics for the sake of graphics is just an ornament. OTOH with the advent of html and common (plato-like) desktop GUIs there is a fusion of graphics and text and associations to action that is also very powerful.

When I type a bash command like:
L1="$(echo $L | cut -d. -f-3)"
this allows me to do something useful and powerful and complex and detailed from the "atoms" Aleph suggests form a language of sorts. It is sad that the GUI is so crude by comparison. When we work from the GUI it is often a bit like painting a picture while wearing boxing gloves - there is no "fine control" - all actions are crude and regular. Yet these crude-regular actions are sufficient and even expedient for performing common tasks.

[uncholowapo]

CLI kicks butt.....

[stevea]

So when you watch a vid or listen to music you prefer to use the command line ! Ridiculous.

[aleph]

Actually I sometimes do prefer starting mplayer from a text terminal emulator to starting the mplayer-gui "gmplayer". The gui is too buggy and what's worse, when it fails it doesn't give me any useful information on why/when/how it dies. The CLI program gives me a whole lot of messages so I managed to track down the problem and fix it.

That said, my anecdote doesn't stand as an argument against the GUI camp. Perhaps it's the particularly buggy and un-informative GUI to blame. What I'm trying to say is: in case of GUI failing to do the work, CLI would save your day. That's why I like it.