Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

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DebianJoe
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Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by DebianJoe » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:02 pm

We don't really have an "opinions" sections, generally because opinions are stupid. Mine probably are too, but I don't really care. I'm an arrogant, offensive, BBQ'er and as such...use the BBQ Philosophy to justify my opinion. I'm going to pick one point and drive it into the ground:

TUI > GUI

I promote (strongly) getting rid of the crutch of point-n-click as soon as you're able, even if it's not something that you plan to use forever. The reason is simple, everything that you can do in GNU Linux is related in some way to command line interface. S11 recently asked about VMs for learning, and while I think that's a good idea to take a new interface for a spin, I don't think that it's close to as good as having a full-blown cli install.

When a baby bird gets to a certain age, the mother bird will teach it to fly and then kick it out of the nest. If she failed to do this, the baby birds would simply sit around playing Call of Duty and eating Cheetos (this is science). So, for the baby bird to ever really learn all of what it means to be a bird, they have to go off on their own without any help.

GUI interfaces are a nest, and you can't learn to fly without leaving the nest. Sure, you can flap your wing and practice, but without that jump from the tree...you'll always rely on the ground being under you. Plus, they're a very unstable nest, and if a big storm comes, a bird who can't fly is subject to being blown from their tree. On the other hand, a bird who is capable of flying can go somewhere where the storm isn't so bad. Being able to get around well from the command line is vital to the growth of any *nixer. At some point, understanding a shell will be the defining factor between success or failure at a project.

By taking away all of the GUI tools, you WILL learn the command line at a significantly increased rate over someone who is only learning it for simple jobs. It takes a little while of being very confused, but the tricks that you learn when you don't have any option but to figure out ways to manipulate the shell are priceless. This is why I don't think that VMs can make up for going all out and --purge X. It forces you to adapt. At first, it's much slower, but over time, the user will not only get faster at cli, but will probably find that they can do everything faster without leaving the keyboard.

It's like this. To rename a file in a GUI, you open your menu, then click on the File Manger you wish to use, you navigate the the directory that your file is located in, and then you probably right-click on it and select "rename" and then finally type in the new name that you wish to call it. From cli, it's just "mv ~/path/oldname ~/path/newname" and return. Done, and without ever having to leave the keyboard.

Cli is superior in speed, and it makes a more knowledgeable user in most cases.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by dkeg » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:48 pm

first off ... classic quote
generally because opinions are stupid
on topic ... absolutely agree. But not only are things truly simpler and faster, but there is more power (careful of that power though) and the user really has the chance to better learn how their system works. Its like you get this visual sense of the inner workings as you move yourself w/in cLI and planning your next moves. Kind of like once you get databases, understanding how an application works, or developing a new one, is that much easier, Honestly, probably makes all better chess players, we just may not know it.

good brain exercise too!

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by bones » Sat Aug 24, 2013 1:48 pm

It's posts like this that will eventually kick my ass into doing exactly what you're saying, kicking the GUI for the TUI. For anyone that hasn't read it, check out "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson. Download text here:

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by gutterslob » Sat Aug 24, 2013 1:51 pm

I don't really get how the bare metal bit forces you to use cli. The VM (or at least how I use it) is just a container. Take the last install I did - Dragonfly BSD - I still had to format whatever drive space I'd allocated just like I would in a bare metall install. Once installed, I interact with it the same way I would a bare metal install. Boot to prompt, specify admin rights, add user to wheel, update ports tree, install stuff, startx if you want - exactly the same as a bare metal install. Other than the option to killswitch the session, there's no GUI menu/submenu option in Parallels (the VM I employ) that makes any decisions for you or helps you through the process of using your virtualized session.

Only difference I see is that you don't have to wrestle with hardware so much. I don't have to bother worrying about Broadcom or Realtek crap since the VM just 'emulates' a standard wired dhcp connection. Same could be said for video cards if you had any, I suppose. In that sense, bare metal forces you to learn about your hardware and what's needed to get it working. Forcing you to learn the TUI/CLI way is just a bi-product of wrestling the said hardware, more a potential fork in the road than an absolute path. You can still do the whole text user interfashebang thing from a VM no problem. It all depends on the distro you're installing. Something like Arch, Gentoo or FreeBSD would still require you to build, massage and give it a happy ending with a TUI, virtualized environment or otherwhise.

Is there something I grossly misunderstood, DJ?
Last edited by gutterslob on Sat Aug 24, 2013 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by DebianJoe » Sat Aug 24, 2013 2:07 pm

@My Beautiful Girl-man-slob,

Only thing I think that you may have not considered is that taking away the GUI in the background forces the user to adapt much faster. Too many distractions make learning harder for many people. By not being able to use a GUI, you'll adapt far faster to not using a GUI.

I also think that I wouldn't have learned as much about the bcm4312 wireless if I had not had to set it up to work with ifupdown from cli.

I'm not saying that VM's don't have their place. I've been programming the little CPUsystool, and I'll assure you, I only test it on actual hardware after it passes to "doesn't burn the VM down" test. Even then, it makes me nervous because BIOS in a VM is not like physical BIOS, and you can't totally predict hardware issues.

I'm not saying that using a VM won't help someone learn, but that it's faster learning to just be thrown to the wolves.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by Sector11 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 4:05 pm

First things first: Thanks for starting this DJ.

Second: HardMetal-CLI: ain't gonna happen here 'for a while', and when it does; it will be a small partition on it's own, not even mounting the other partitions for my use only.

I'm an old timer that has trouble typing, (3.5 fingers lookin' at the keyboard), my wife knows nothing about computers at all except point click ... we have one computer we share - even the log-in. She uses icedove, I use claws-mail so that keeps that simple.
OFFTOPIC :
More history: "I'm finally here" first post to CrunchBang which is OT here.
My mind has been going in six directions since I joined LBBQ and one of those paths installed darkside-64 on the back two partitions. I have admired gutterslob's and rstrcogburn's screenshots for years, and wanted to do what they do, but read above ... mom abandoned me a long time ago, I fell out of the nest, and damnit, I wanna fly! I'm gonna fly!

I'm a noob, this is a huge step, but it will happen. First in a box, that's another 'gonna' after reading your "after it passes to "doesn't burn the VM down" test", and gutterslob's "you don't have to wrestle with hardware so much". As I said above, one computer, two people, one a noob and one a point-n-click user. Sure, I'm not going to do the things you do, but I'm not going to set myself up to crash and burn either.

My first priority is to NOT crunch bang the main system (and I'm using SID {rolls eyes}) - I have my backups. I've crashed and burned quite a few times since coming to Linuxdom. And I know how to glue the pieces together quite nicely saving 99% to 100% of my personal info.

@ gutter - Parallels! You're a MAC user? damn learn something new every day.

To end - since this is about opinions --- what would be a good one, the three are in Debian repos: VirtualBox, QEMU, or VMware (the free version).
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by DebianJoe » Sat Aug 24, 2013 4:25 pm

I personally like Oracle's VirtualBox. I use it at work to launch fake Win7, fake WinXP, fake, Win95. I use DosBOX for DOS faking. I have to interface with some very strange hardware, and since some of the drivers are proprietary as in "installed from ancient mediums and written by someone who's dead now", it is a necessary evil.

I can understand with the shared computer why you'd choose to take the safe route. Especially if your wife is the other user. My wife doesn't even attempt to use my computers without my little girl telling her how.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by Sector11 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 6:53 pm

hahahaha yea, kids are intuitive aren't they. Your little girl is growing up in the best of both worlds:
World One: Linux + TUI.
World Two: point and click.

I'll give VirtualBox a look.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by gutterslob » Sun Aug 25, 2013 8:38 am

@Sect11
I'd personally take QEMU/KVM, since it offers very fine-grained control over your virtualized environment. It's also generally the fastest. VMware Player is also pretty good, but I don't think it's available on the repos. You'll have to download and sh the .bundle from their website. Either way, both QEMU/KVM and VMplayer solutions require more documentation reading. Virtualbox is my personal least preferred solution, but is probably the most straightforward/easiest to get up and running, even if it does stink of Larry Botox Ellison.

@DebJoe
I've spent way too long with bcm drivers. I don't really want to see them anymore, truth be told. They're a liquid pain!!
I suppose it's down to the type of user at the end. Kinda ironic that, when I first started out with Linux all those years back, I actually wanted to try getting things to work on obscure/difficult hardware. Nowadays, I'd rather spend more time researching and hunting down hardware that's guaranteed to be trouble-free in order to spend less time with the configuration later on. If I had 30 minutes a day to learn stuff, I'd rather be noodling with zsh or bash instead of lm-sensors or fglrx. You'd also have to take people's lifestyle/circumstances into consideration. Some people might only have one computer available to them. Heck, even I'm moving towards that, simply because I don't like the clutter around my home any longer. I'll obviously have a backup thinkpad or netbook in case the main system dies, but for the most part, I'll be running all my operating systems on a single unit in the very near future and will most definitely prefer switching between environments without rebooting. Horses for courses, but if my girlfriend ever wanted to learn Linux/BSD, it'd definitely be in a VM if it were on my computer. Then again, I'm not a sysadmin or developer, so I do understand why someone like yourself would prefer a bare metal installation as an ultimate target environment. Also, no question that a relatively new user would probably stand to gain a lot more about system setup/administration from bare metal. I never argued that fact. Whether he'd learn more about bash or c or vim or ncurses from a bare metal install than a virtualized one, that's open to interpretation/implementation.

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by machinebacon » Mon May 02, 2016 6:27 pm

pull this one up...

Even after nearly 3 years, the views shared here are very much BBQ :D
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by slartie » Tue May 03, 2016 1:45 am

This discussion reminds me of how old I'm getting. I started with cli using the Lambda, C64, C128, ZX Spectrum, 8086, 8088 and then a 80286 where I finally had my first brush with a point and click interface in the guise of Windows 2.1.

I pretty much agree with everything Joe says in his post. TUI > GUI.

edit: my very first "computer" was this beautiful lady: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1080

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by GekkoP » Tue May 03, 2016 11:01 am

One thing I noticed in my daily workflow is that TUI is a must-have for maintenance: bunch of scripts, rsync, zsh, ssh. Also security via ipkungfu and clamav. CLI just makes it simpler to understand and reasonable to maintain.

And I'm telling this as an otherwise heavy GUI user.

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by wuxmedia » Tue May 03, 2016 1:20 pm

gui (cpanel) confuses the shit out of me on a server.
I can do it all on the shell, mysqldumps mysql < inputs.sql copies and domain binding.
just the web really, the only thing that's inescapable for me -
"my site is down"
*checks on lynx. looks fine to me.
"no, it's broken <rant>"
*checks in chrome, - ahm I see, oh yes the css isn't loading....
our ticket system is a terrible mess of iframes :( although most of the other systems are OK in a TUI browser.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by machinebacon » Wed May 04, 2016 2:10 am

^ that's exactly what I do whenever I notice a website doesn't load. (e)links(2)/lynx/w3m and all is well.
Sure, one could write a yad/zenity wrapper to GUIfy everything. And then? :D
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by wuxmedia » Wed May 04, 2016 7:42 am

^ yeah on the road to feature creep :)
I actually use httpie
could actually do with writing a "status overview" script. hmm
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by ivanovnegro » Wed May 04, 2016 9:34 pm

When I install some other random fancy distro, their GUI update managers just suck! I hate pop ups and messages telling me to update. One more reason I switched all mission critical machines at home to run on Debian Stable rather than Ubuntu. Better half is not seeing any difference and she even uses apt-get to update.

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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by wuxmedia » Thu May 05, 2016 7:06 am

^ yeah, my better half ignores hers on Xubuntu anyway.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by Dr_Chroot » Wed May 11, 2016 12:59 am

^^ I have a love-hate relationship with Ubuntu's fully bloated systems in this regard. I think Unity can be pretty gorgeous, actually, but Ubuntu gets in my way too much. I've been humming for almost a month with just i3 in Jessie and sometimes a Win7 VM + Ubuntu 16.04 w/ FVWM. Nothing in my way - it treats me like a competent user. I can update when I wish, if I wish, how I wish, and what I wish. *cue Braveheart-esque cries of FREEEDOMMM*
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by wuxmedia » Wed May 11, 2016 7:15 am

^ I run i3 on xubuntu (now) as for the above reasons.
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Re: Why HardMetal + cli == good for you.

Unread post by machinebacon » Thu May 19, 2016 6:48 am

Installed Ubuntu Kylin 16.04 for kicks on the old Portege and it's basically Unity with a horizontal bar instead of a vertical one. Isn't that bad, seems Buntu acts a tiny bit snappier recently. I carry it around on a USB stick and gave it to my colleague who ran it for a test on her laptop - she was like "Woah, I never knew my computer is that quick!" (she actually uses Windows).

Now if you start with Ubuntu core and build it up without zeitgeist and avahi and stuff... you get something that is as light as a standard BBQ. Ubuntu as desktop wants to make everything for everyone, but boy, it is really a beginners plug-and-play system, and shit like network shares or printers are solved with a single click.
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