Are you all nuts???

[hansd]

This will probably get me a lot of hatemail but....
I am a long time not experienced fedora user with, "if it runs donot touch"
When i wanted to install a nvidia driver in F12 i googled of course and you donot want to know what was advised to get this done and what problems needed to be solved on the road. E.g. commands of e.g. 3 lines long as one of the installation steps.

Now the question.... why is it so complicated to copy what WIndows does when software/drivers needed to be installed (setup.exe). The way it is now the Fedora guys, sorry to say, are living in the dark ages. I would feel ashamed to deliver something like this. I already had a bad feeling when 15 years ago, working on Unix when an error occurred, i got the message "oops an error has occured"

[Dan]

Yeah. We're all nuts.

Moved to Reviews, Rants & Things That Make You Scream. <....>

[hansd]

thought so, probably all nice nuts also

[glennzo]

Yep. I'm out of my mind, but at the same time I would say that I'm pretty much in control of my destiny as it relates to all things computer.

[forkbomb]

Well, UNIX would be one hair away from the dark ages.

Personally I'll never understand why so many people seem to assume that using the command line is "backwards" or "obsolete." Perception is a function of experience.

Maybe using a mysterious setup.exe with mysterious contents is what we ought to get rid of. Perhaps .exe click-monkeying is what's backwards.

[hansd]

i had the same feeling about command lines when, using DOS, windows came around with that mouse thing and clicks and icons. Took me 2 years to step over and 1 year more to see this was the best invention ever.

[forkbomb]

Well, mice are good for some things. GUIs are inherently great for management of multiple tasks. For everyday multitasking, the GUI-with-mouse paradigm is a boon.

Nevertheless, sorry to say, but command line interfaces are still king, after all these years, at doing some things. Especially if you're experienced and know exactly what you need to do, and need to do it now. Still, it really is a function of familiarity. Though I wouldn't get rid of my GUI for doing everyday stuff, it actually still does make sense to hotkey as many tasks as possible to the keyboard even when you are using a GUI.

As I have been known to quip - I don't know about you, but I have two hands.

[hansd]

you're totally right if you are designing the next generation nuke missile, i for shure would want to know what i am doing, but for installing a driver????. I do not care at all what i am doing, just want it to work.

[scottro]

I would say that command line is still quite usable, and often preferable. Even WIndows has added a powershell or something simlar recently.
For example, at my old job a user had to rename 500 images--she thought she would have to do it with a GUI application, one by one. As it was stored on a Unux server, I wrote a script and did it for her in two minutes.

As for installing things like drivers, unfortunately, this is more political than anything else. It has to do with remaining open source--Fedora actually pays people to try to create drivers so that you won't have to do all that typing. It's not ready for primetime yet, however.

For what it's worth, Fedora and many others are working hard to make WIndows/Mac users happy, where everything will be nicely hiddent from the user behind graphic interfaces.

[hansd]

Right about the e.g. bulk rename. Am a bit lazier, needed it, googled and found Bulk Rename Utility, freeware, gui Took me 1 minute (kidding, probably 2). However when i would have been an experienced unix scripter, which i am not, would not bother to google for a gui also.

[glennzo]

I actually enjoy the command line experience

[joe.pelayo]

If I am nuts because I use the command line, I am really enjoying it and wouldn't think twice to do it again!

Obviously you haven't got any task that can take advantage of automation or involve programming, have you Han?

In my case I am currently working with the combination BASH + FORTRAN to perform some programming and data analysis and I find it unbeatable (of course, there might be easier options, but give me a break!). Whenever I get tired or something I just have to think "thank you *nix for including a command line, what would I do without it?"

Thanks,
Joe.

[leigh123linux]

Originally Posted by hansd

This will probably get me a lot of hatemail but....
I am a long time not experienced fedora user with, "if it runs donot touch"
When i wanted to install a nvidia driver in F12 i googled of course and you donot want to know what was advised to get this done and what problems needed to be solved on the road. E.g. commands of e.g. 3 lines long as one of the installation steps.

Now the question.... why is it so complicated to copy what WIndows does when software/drivers needed to be installed (setup.exe). The way it is now the Fedora guys, sorry to say, are living in the dark ages. I would feel ashamed to deliver something like this. I already had a bad feeling when 15 years ago, working on Unix when an error occurred, i got the message "oops an error has occured"

Are you insane? , after all you are silly enough to use Windows XP

[hansd]

are you all nuts was meant to say you all accepted installing a video driver was a 'pain in the ass' where it is seamless 1 minute in Win. No offence meant. Nothing against command lines, works wonderful sometimes, but i try to avoid it as much as possible. Do a lot of programming in my free time, nice to have, fun to do, did a lot of IT stuf in the past (fortran, assembler, pl/i, cobol, lot of database systems, worked on Sun unix, hated VI, and start to hate Nvidia

---------- Post added at 01:12 AM CST ---------- Previous post was at 01:06 AM CST ----------

Originally Posted by leigh123linux

Are you insane? , after all you are silly enough to use Windows XP

yes, love it and i totally donot care if it's called windows or wondiws, made by gates or gotes as long as it does what i want most of the time

[forkbomb]

Well, fair enough I suppose, but whether or not a driver will "just work" has nothing to do, necessarily, with the installation method. There's is not necessarily a connection between GUI installation and ease of use.

Put it this way. GUIs aren't necessarily "easier" to use or more likely to give a "everything works" situation to the user. Double-clicking installs are not necessarily going to produce "it just works" situations. Command line usage isn't necessarily harder or more esoteric.

To me, one of the worst things about the dominance of Windows is that it has implanted into an entire generation of computer users the flawed assumption that command lines are evil and that click-monkeyism is necessarily better. Microsoft's domination has thrust into the average computer user's mind a (flawed) association of clicking with ease of use.

I firmly maintain that the most important reason why people see non-GUI methods as "hard" has to do almost entirely with familiarity. Before coming to Linux I literally did not want to touch a command line. Period. I figured that was for programmers. (The irony is that today I am still not a programmer and yet know a lot more about command line usage than the average programming student at my school.)

tl;dr: as another man once said far more eloquently, "the only intuitive interface is the nipple." (And he later said that even that is debatable.)