Linux : the cool factor - part 2

Posted March 6th, 2009 by j00p34

Linux the cool factor

As I wrote in my last post, I think Linux is not perceived as cool by enough people.
While Linux is definitely very cool!

Last time I mentioned compiz, which gave very different responses. Some people think it's great others hate it. Today I'll throw in something completely different.

Next thing

The next thing that I think makes Linux cool, is the command line!
"The command line?" I hear you think. "Isn't that the most hated feature of linux?"

The command line interface is often seen as complex and difficult to learn.
While it does take some effort to get used to it, it's only a steep learning curve at the start.
The most things I know about using the command line I learned in my first few months as linux user.

GUI for everything

While it may seem of no use learning the command line. In these days with gui's for everything, where there's no reason for everyday users, even in linux, to use the command line.
The moment you get over the point where it feels natural to use, you'll feel it's power. Then you'll understand why it's cool. If you know what you can do and at what speed, you'll clearly understand it's a small effort to learn using the command line.

What you can do

There are many tools available, for use in the command line interface.

You can browse the web with one of the available text browsers like lynx or w3m.
w3m has frames,tabs,tables and if you have a compatible terminal even images. It opens images on your desktop in a separate window if you run a GUI and click on an image link.
lynx is super lightweight.

You can download torrents with a command line torrent client, websites with httrack, single files with wget.

There are many audio and even video players available.

There's instant messaging clients, email readers, you name it.

There even action games on the command line, it's a whole new world to discover. And it's all very resource friendly and at lightning speed. Battery low on your netbook? Power it up without the GUI and read your email or browse the web in super power saving mode.

efficient

The command line interface with all it's limitations has been used for so many years, by so many people, that all kinds of improvements have been assimilated in it. This makes it an incredibly efficient tool.

yakuake

I personally use yakuake this is a terminal emulator which drops from the top of your screen like a quake terminal at the press of F12. This gives you instant command line access, and great power at your hands.

Take the time

So take the time to learn the command line, and become lightning fast. And one other thing which is also nice, many people think the command line takes a lot of time to learn. This makes you look like a power user if you can navigate the command line with ease. That's kind of cool, because it can earn you some respect.

React!

This is the second article in a series I'm planning on writing about the coolness of Linux, I do have some ideas for the next articles. But still I would appreciate it if you have an idea why Linux is cool, leave a comment if you think there's some specially cool feature in Linux I should pay attention to.

Don't worry if your comments don't get published immediately, it can take up to 10 hours.
If you are in a different time zone.

Gnome-do

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 10 hours ago

If you think the CLI is cool, you should look at gnome-do. With Win+Space you will get a window that lets you do nearly anything via keyboard INCLUDING command line interactions, provided you activated the right plugins. Admittedly, it is still version 0.8, but it does wonders for my productivity.

Win Powershell is nothing

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 11 hours ago

Linux blows Apple and certainly Windows away in it's availability of CLI tools.
Windows powershell is simply a reaction to Linux. Microsoft will never emphasize CLI tools because that isn't their market.

Commandline: a life-saver

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 12 hours ago

The commandline is definitely a very cool thing in Linux. And people who think it is hard to learn, should try Vim (or Vi for purists). Now, thÃ t is hard to learn...

When I install anything, I never use the GUI, because somehow I am feeling that I miss something. And for me it is fun to see things happening in the terminal-window. That way I understand better how things work and what is needed to get things done...

Thanks for the nice article!

Really You think thats cool ???

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 14 hours ago

I guess for some it might be, But I think that after 30 years or so that using a shell or CLI is a bit old hat.

Its also not unique to Linux, mac and windows both have very powerfull scripting and CLI's.

You might want to fire up a Windows box and have a look at powershell and the graphical windows powerShell.

They all work and they all do much the same thing, but its hard for me (or most) to see them as "cool".

WINE is cool ?? well if you think being able to run windows software is cool then why not just get the Windows OS ?

I will tell you something that is cool, is the Vista and W7 speech recognition system it works like a charm and seems very accurate and effective. and well thats COOL :)

Wine is cool because...

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 1 day 7 hours ago

"WINE is cool ?? well if you think being able to run windows software is cool then why not just get the Windows OS ?"

While Windows OS may blow in comparison to Linux the programs made for it may not. What's cool about Wine is that it allows you to run Windows applications without Windows from Linux and allow interaction between Linux and Windows software.

This all seems so obvious to me that I wonder why anyone would actually ask what you just did... Obviously installing Windows is out of question for me when I can get the advantages of windows applications combined with those of Linux apps + power, efficiensy & stability of Linux OS while at it. Not to mention the price difference of Linux vs. Windows.

Any more of these smart questions? ;) I'll be happy to enlighten you about whatever bothers your mind...

Linux coolness

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 10 hours ago

Linux interoperates with Windows. That's productive. That's cool.

Windows is sooo Last Century

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 3 days 11 hours ago

Way back in '84 when power users had UNIX Graphical WIMP workstations, with 32bit power, multiple PUs, 21" Colour screens, and Ethernet connectivity, we also had voice recognition that could interpret CLI commands, and give aural responses.

These systems were considered only a milestone in the development of an all talking all 3D seeing all reading system that would have replaced the '84 system by 2000 at the latest.

Microsoft unfortunately got all the development money and has spent the last 25 years eking out their version of this 20th century milestone to a gullible dollar paying public, effectively stopping development of a more mature system.

Bill Gates cleverly marketed himself as a knowledgeable geek who had the best interests of the "ordinary people" at heart, chucking all the real geek stuff out in his desire to control the users of IBM's emerging personal computer market.

Anyone who knows the practical history of UNIX will know that in the early '70s ordinary clerks at AT&T did all their computing with the CLI and the shell, and many were clever enough to write their own scripts to automate many of their tasks. Even the advent of the '74 invented XEROX WIMP failed to lure these productive clerks completely away from scripting.

Now is the time to relegate Windows to the scrap heap of history and get the new UNIX contender back on the original development track so we can at last have a really usable computer interface instead of an incremental system purely designed give users a 20th century milestone to make money for Microsoft.

Of course, the shell is not

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 2 hours ago

Of course, the shell is not a feature that is going to win over Mac people: Mac OS X comes with a terminal capable of running all major shells and giving the user access to a stable and POSIX-compatible UNIX.

nothing will

admin 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 2 hours ago

nothing will win over mac users for Linux, everybody knows that.
The point of the article is that Linux is cool and Linux is free, not that mac users should use Linux.
Apple builds good stuff, it's just expensive and not free. And it's not any more cool than Linux.
If you want to pay for a UNIX based system, that's your choice.

First off, we don't use

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago

First off, we don't use Windows terminology like "command line". The thing you speak of is called a shell. Also, using a shell is about many things other than simply not having a GUI. It is about ultimate flexibility and control. It is about automation and power via modularity.

I know but,

admin 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 15 hours ago

I know it's called a shell, but: I didn't think it would make the text any easier to understand if I would first start explaining the complete terminology. Then if you start about the shell, I feel if you really tend to be accurate you should also explain about the different shells available,the terminal emulator and the terminal. The shell is often referred to as cli (command line interface) so I thought it would be ok like this.

while it certainly is cool,

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 23 hours ago

while it certainly is cool, I don't think many people who don't already use the command-line a lot understand it.
I got an idea for the next topic though, software freedom and fixes/improvements, although it might be more about superiority than coolness, but the point is that with free software no one is disallowed to fix and improve the software, which shows clearly in the speed of security fixes in free software. and with that topic it should also be pointed out that even users who don't know how to code do benefit from this, simply because the code is shared and the end-user will find updated binaries where he or she found them the first time. and also worth mentioning that with the sources freely available developers cannot add mean code (like viruses) to the software without someone noticing (and either removing the bad code and removing the developer's commit rights or warning others about it)
of course this only holds true for free and open source software though, not things like skype and most things you'd run in wine

What I always say

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 6 days 1 hour ago

Whenever anyone tells me how infinitely superior GUIs are to CLIs, I ask them how they would feel about having a directory (sorry, "folder") with 500 files in it and being asked to delete every file with abc *somewhere* in its name.

I also highly recommend (even if some of it - the remarks on Beos - show its age) Neil Stevenson's In The Beginning Was the Command Line for a well-reasoned counterblast to the GUI fans.

A better test

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 2 days 17 hours ago

try this one: you have a directory with 35,000 cache files and about twenty other files. Delete all the files that begin sess_

hint: rm sess_* will not work because bash does not accept 34,000 arguments.

That's kind of cool, because

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 6 days 2 hours ago

That's kind of cool, because it can earn you some respect.
Yeah that's true. When I am using the command-line, even for something simple like an apt-get, my friends get all OMFG you are a hacker man!!!!
And then they start all that "can you steal that girl's facebook password?" ...
then i say: man, you're crazy. that would require lots of knowledge and work..
Then they do that "meh" face.. yeah, they aren't believing me.

you should say:

admin 3 years 10 weeks 5 days 15 hours ago

you should respond with: steeling passwords is not cool, while it's not difficult, it's just not cool to harm other people. What is cool to do, is agree with your friends to penetration test their computers from your system. Show them how easy their computers can be compromised by using standard tools like nmap, to show them what's running on their systems and what vulnerabilities that gives them. That will give them a completely different view on their own facebook password ;-)

Wine

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 6 days 4 hours ago

Hello,

I personally think Wine makes Linux and other UNIX operating systems cool. You can enjoy all of the features of Linux/Unix and at the same time run office applications and a large number of games with Wine. While Wine isn't perfect it still brings a cool factor when you fire up MS Office 2007 or a D3D/DirectX based game on Linux for the first time without the need for a Windows licence.

http://bordeauxgroup.com/

Cheers,

Tom

Command line, defenitely

Anonymous 3 years 10 weeks 6 days 7 hours ago

The command line is very cool. It bugs when people say, "I know how to use Windows/OSX", and yet don't know a thing about navigating their system from a command prompt.