First observations and some heresy

GavinW

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First observation:
The Download Linux page is presumably only for x86 users. What about ARM? The only Linuxes I am currently using are Raspbian and Manjaro-ARM.

Heresy:
There were motorcars with running-boards right up until World War II. I am not suggesting that the commandline will ever be obsolete, but in my book a comfortable user-interface makes use of the keyboard as unnecessary and infrequent as possible. And, in case you are wondering, I loathe the swipe and gesture user-interfaces of mobile phones and tablets, to which my sausagelike digits have never adapted. They make irrecoverable inadvertent actions too easy. Give me a mouse, with at least three buttons, and a decent graphical user-interface. A good GUI should support a consistent graphical metaphor for filing systems, and obey the classical principle that every user-action invokes an immediate graphical response. No more whirling activity-icons that suddenly stop, leaving the user in doubt as to whether the requested activity is actually in progress or the computer has locked up. On my system you never need to enter a file's pathname; you simply SHIFT-drag the file's icon onto the page where you want to write it. One of the purposes of a desktop is to enable the user to consult many documents simultaneously while entering data into others. That is why a good GUI should never conflate the input-window with the top of the graphical stack. My difficulty with commandlines is that I have a poor memory for commands and options. By the time I have closed the man page I have forgotten its contents. Admittedly, that is my fault, not the computer's, but, despite all the computing power now available, GUIs are no better than those of 30 years ago. I presume that this is because programming GUIs is hard, and the market conditions for their development mostly work in the wrong direction.
I hope to learn many things from this forum, but I fear that my heretical views may not be received with sympathy or that I may cause offence. Having got used to doing things in a particular way, I may be a poorer student than one has never done them in any way.
 


G'day @GavinW and welcome to linux.org :)

Nice rant ;)

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
G’day Gavin, Welome to Linux. Org

Yeah, agree with @wizardfromoz , not a bad rant.

Join in and enjoy yourself here.
 
First of all welcome to the forums @GavinW ! You are not forced to use the command-line and you may not understand what the command-line is for. The command-line was invented in order to control the computer because computers were only controlled by experts when they were first invented since they weren't what they are today, then later graphical interfaces was created by that time computers were more accessible to the average users. All the tasks you do in the graphical interface you can still do through the command-line, since most user applications now days are created to be used by the user to use graphical applications I can see your point. However there are a lot of tasks that can't be done as easily on a command-line as on a graphical interface, take for example system administrative or programming tasks. Lastly there are tasks that are simply easier accomplished on the command-line rather than the graphical-interface even for normal users and when using Linux as your OS you are doing yourself a favor by knowing at least some basic command-line knowledge which will make things a lot easier on yourself when you run into problems and need to troubleshoot something. You have a hard time remember commands? How did you learn to walk, run, talk, the alphabet, write, math, drive? You learned to those by repeatedly doing it until you were able to also known as practicing. That is not any different for learning to work with the command-line, I have faith in you that if you put yourself to it you will be able to remember commands and know basic command-line usage. Since you learned all the other things I mentioned I know you can do this if you really want to not that you have to, and not to forget I am sure you have skills that I or others don't have that would be hard for me and others. Lastly I am not good at explaining things, but I sure will do my best to explain when answering your questions when you create a thread. If something is not quite clear I'm sure @wizardfromoz and @Condobloke will be able to help you understand :)
 
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Thank you for your kind greetings. I fully take on board the advantages of a commandline. I would like to learn if there are Linux GUIs in which I can execute commands (with no parameters, necessarily) by simply clicking on the icon of a command script. In like manner, I would like to be able to execute a command with a single parameter (a pathname) by dragging the icon of the file with that pathname onto the icon of the command script. All the Linux GUIs that I have so far encountered do not seem to offer dragging as a possible user-action. I realize that there are lots of security questions concerning ownership and attributes of files which muddy these waters.
 
Reasonable questions :), best asked and answered in Forum, rather than here, so that all may benefit.

If you have a small number of similar questions, you can start a Thread in General Linux, and if you have questions on the Command Line (Scripting would be included with these), then Command Line is your go.

Our hope is to "un-muddy" the waters for our Members, but we'll see how we go :D

Friday here in Oz, so to all

Stay safe, enjoy your Linux, and

Avagudweegend

Wizard
 

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