[HLUG] Command Line Witchcraft?

[Sarah Chard]

Malcolm
that is exactly my point - you learnt early on so using cli is not scary
for you - it's not out of your comfort zone or in any way unusual and
you are not worried at all about using it because you understand it.

As my partner commented when I spoke about this conversation 
'why would i want to do any of that stuff - I don't want lots of choice
- if I want to go to Tenbury I just get in the car and go - I don't need
to be a motor mechanic to drive a car'

That's the point about the command line - those people who use their
systems for the basics ie email, web, word processing etc - have no need
to learn cli they don't mind what others perceive as the limitations of
a GUI they just want to get the task done quickly and easily.
For those who want to go further the cli is there - but it can be quite
a steep learning curve if you have no experience and no understanding of
'why' and 'what' you are doing so just starting to use the cli can be
daunting.
It may be quicker and easier to do tasks once you have learnt how to
use the cli and it may open further doors for you but lots of people
won't have the desire/time/confidence to start using the cli - 
A good GUI also make's all the difference in persuading people to move
to Linux.

Sarah

On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 12:23 +0000, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
> i learnt to use vi whilst at Poly 25 years ago; a 1970's editor with
> querky commands and an ancient interface; why was i learning this ?
> 
> i still use it everyday (nope, never got on with emacs) and still does
> things a lot of GUI editors can't
> 
> my VAX / PDP11 days also mean command line wins everytime; sure you can
> do damage, but you have the power you don't have with a GUI interface.
> scripts, loops, aliases and repitition etc
> 
> Malc