CLI in Linux

[JohnnyJazz]

I'm almost finished wit the the Linux course advised by Cloggie "Introduction to Linux" / https://www.edx.org/ It's interesting and it also makes for a nice walk down memory lane as I haven't use command lines since university (many) years ago.

Now here is my question. Knowing that the GUI was first developed to make the job of professional programmers easier, for people using the CLI, what do you mainly use it for ?

[dave_boo]

Most to least.

ssh (into Raspberry Pi)

wget

locate

grep

./nvidia[Tab] && modprobe nvidia && rcxdm start && exit (obviously I'm in my Download directory and using "su")

Used to use updatedb every time before locate, but that's silly when I can have a cronjob running it.

[Guest]

Pretty much all the Linux servers I manage has only CLI access. Therefore everything from accessing the servers to maintenance tasks. Upgrades, moving backups etc.

I switched from Linux laptop to OSX laptop not so long ago. Even with the Apple, the main way for me to manage files or open videos with VLC is using CLI. It's just the fastest way to get the computer to do what it should do.

[Paul944]

The Linux systems I have to work on do not have any graphical interface installed. I do not even know where the systems are located exactly. I don't even know the graphical tools to do any admin work on a Linux box, only the command line ones.

[innerspace]

Servers the gui is an unnecessary resource and security risk, servers should have only essential software installed. So for servers CLI is almost everything.

There are web interfaces to CLI functions available such as webmin, these are nice for things where visual interfaces are useful, but many thing command line is quicker and easier.

For a normal machine CLI is best for SSH into the aforementioned servers, top, kill, df, du, ls, grep, chmod, chown, many others and of course any custom made shell scripts.

Would say you are wrong about gui first being to help programmers, that was a side effect. Gui were first developed to make computers more accessible to non-programmers who were confused and stumbled at a command prompt.

[JohnnyJazz]

Would say you are wrong about gui first being to help programmers, that was a side effect. Gui were first developed to make computers more accessible to non-programmers who were confused and stumbled at a command prompt.

That's what I was thinking too but someone pointed out the GUI was first developed at the XEROX PARC by people who couldn't care less about clueless end users (who actually didn't even existed at the time) but were only interested to facilitate the work of their peers. It was Steve Job who had first the idea to adapt it for, as you say, the non-programmers who were confused and stumbled at a command prompt. Big debate here ;-)

Edited August 30, 2014 by JohnnyJazz

[keeniau96]

The PARC story you hear was wrong. I was down the road at SRI and we enjoyed working with the PARC lot. Graphics was a part of SmallTalk, which was developed as one of the first efforts at object oriented programming. The overall goal was to integrate office work and office equipment but the Xerox management just never got the grasp. Graphics for office use was among the things demonstrated to Jobs during his tour, and he was far slicker than the Xerox management at seeing the use for office applications.

[JohnnyJazz]

The PARC story you hear was wrong. I was down the road at SRI and we enjoyed working with the PARC lot. Graphics was a part of SmallTalk, which was developed as one of the first efforts at object oriented programming. The overall goal was to integrate office work and office equipment but the Xerox management just never got the grasp. Graphics for office use was among the things demonstrated to Jobs during his tour, and he was far slicker than the Xerox management at seeing the use for office applications.

Different people, different recollection. It's nice to have the opinion of someone who was actually there. Thanks for your contribution. If you have other stories from this era, do not hesitate to share them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be happy to listen to them.

[ukrules]

I use the command line over ssh for exerything on the linux servers, like others I get a base install and take it from there.

I mainly use CentOS, I think hardly a day goes by where I don't use vi even after all these years.

Edited August 31, 2014 by ukrules

[rakman]

There are some things that require a gui to manage. For those few I use vncserver without running the full gui. This allows a quick exit from the gui once I'm done and unload the vncserver.

[Guest]

The Linux systems I have to work on do not have any graphical interface installed. I do not even know where the systems are located exactly. I don't even know the graphical tools to do any admin work on a Linux box, only the command line ones.

I started to think what are the gui tools which are useful.

Wireshark is one for analysing the network data. I used it previously when I had to debug what was wrong with SIP/RTP connections (and there were plenty of problems). The work can be done with CLI as well, but in this case GUI gives superior interface when going inside the data.

[dave_boo]

I have had a couple of hard drives being passed around between Windows 8.1, OSX, and OpenSUSE like a Nana girl in the Arab section on 2 for one night. A lot of hidden files that one OS or another (actually just Win8 and OSX) were putting on the drives that were popping up on my DAP. Rather than rummaging through them, I ran the below command to get rid of the crap. Note that you can put an -i argument in after the -exec to confirm each action. Make sure you change the "files you want found and deleted" but keep the quotation marks ("") around them. For instance OSX has a lot of .DH* and ._.DH* files so I'd have ".DH*" or "._.DH*". Technically you can get away with just ".*" to get rid of all those hidden files.

find . -type f -name "files you want found and deleted" -exec rm -f {} \;

[MrTee]

Even on Windows Servers administrators need to use CLI (PowerShell) - so much quicker and more convenient than using a GUI, also can get down to a much lower level than a GUI allows. .