'Linux'... First Introduction !!

[GlennSprigg]

Funny how time gaps develop when looking back.  No question that Unix precedes DOS, and that DOS was heavily influenced by Unix and its derivatives.  But Unix was developed in 1969-1970.  CP/M was developed in 1974 and was certainly highly influenced by Unix.   MS-DOS followed in 1980 and added its own small variations.

Remember that Microsoft had its own version of UNIX, called XENIX. That is what they originally wanted high-end PC power users to move to. The plan was for MS-DOS to be the low-end consumer OS, XENIX to be the high-end OS, and for a new transitional OS called XEDOS to be released in 1982 for the IBM PC. But as MS-DOS gained in popularity, Microsoft gave up on the XEDOS idea and instead added many UNIX-like features into DOS 2.0, including subdirectories, command switches, pipes, redirection, etc.

With an undocumented CONFIG.SYS command (SWITCHAR) you could even redefine the default switch character from / to - (so that DIR /W would become DIR -W), which would also change the subdirectory character from \ to / like it is in UNIX. And another undocumented CONFIG.SYS command (AVAILDEV) would represent system devices as files in the /DEV directory, just like in UNIX. But these two features remained undocumented and were dropped from DOS 3.x because they broke compatibility with existing DOS software.

Microsoft has ALWAYS tried to go off on their own Tangents... probably to try and monopolize everything! 
After the 'Internet' started to really get going, they couldn't grasp how it was a "For the people, by the people"
kind of thing. Then they brought in 'MSN' (The Microsoft Network). Does anyone still use it, or see it for what it is?
Then they try to bring in 'JScript' instead of 'JavaScript', to suit their own ends, not worried about compatibility.
I used to like Coding, (various languages), but now it's almost like back to square-1 with all this '.net' crap...
Keep in mind, I'm old now. I don't want to re-learn everything wearing Toddler Nappies!!!   

[free_electron]

DOS is a watered-down version of UNIX. Linux is a proper UNIX implementation. Linux may have come after DOS, but UNIX was first. DOS is the "wheel reinventer" here. 

So things like ls, cp, mv and xargs (good luck doing that on DOS) were first.

Learning the cli in UNIX (Linux) is pure power. I recommend it.

not true. Dos is CP/M copycat

[brucehoult]

DOS is a watered-down version of UNIX. Linux is a proper UNIX implementation. Linux may have come after DOS, but UNIX was first. DOS is the "wheel reinventer" here. 

So things like ls, cp, mv and xargs (good luck doing that on DOS) were first.

Learning the cli in UNIX (Linux) is pure power. I recommend it.

not true. Dos is CP/M copycat

If so, what happened to pip?

[SiliconWizard]

DOS is a watered-down version of UNIX. Linux is a proper UNIX implementation. Linux may have come after DOS, but UNIX was first. DOS is the "wheel reinventer" here. 

So things like ls, cp, mv and xargs (good luck doing that on DOS) were first.

Learning the cli in UNIX (Linux) is pure power. I recommend it.

not true. Dos is CP/M copycat

More correct would be to say that DOS was a very stripped-down CP/M copycat... actually, there's a lot DOS didn't have that CP/M did, but I'm curious about the converse?

[rstofer]

You can always create more familiar commands with 'alias'.  Suppose you just can't remember 'cat' but you really want to list a file

<prompt> $ alias list='cat'

Now there will be a 'list' command that invokes 'cat'.  This isn't usually a good idea because 'cat' is far more than just a file lister but it works.

You can see predefined aliases

<prompt> $ alias
{all predefined aliases print out here}  Most have to do with colorizing various commands like

alias ls='ls --color=auto'  which adds color to the file listing WHICH I HATE!  One of their color selections if effectively invisible if you have the slightest color deficiency.

Aliases you create during a terminal session disappear when you close the terminal.  To make them permanent edit ~/.bashrc.  You will find several in that file including some useful directory utilities based on 'ls' that are commented out.  Aliases don't become effective until you open another terminal.

We typically use the 'bash' shell although we could use 'sh' instead.  You can also install 'csh' with 'sudo apt-get install csh'.  There are books about the differences and mostly, people are happy with bash for the terminal and use sh in scripts.  csh is not as popular and I haven't actually used it.

[tycz]

I feel a lot of the CLI is better just comes down to it being easier to instruct on and it's also often more consistent.  Run this command rather than:
what GUI are you using, what version, do you have a icon that looks like a bird, yea, click the little arrow, what just came up etc...  WTF did you just click on??? Ummmm, was OK the ONLY button.... No I did not tell you to click on that.... WTF are you talking about, you click the button not me, next time 'Warning' appears don't click the Freakin OK button unless I tell you too...

I don't think a command line is much better in this regard. A single wrong character or space will cause a command to fail. And the incompetent user is just an likely to write the wrong command as to click the wrong button. Not to mention that the output of many CLI programs can be incomprehensible to a user who hasn't ever used it before ('ls' is a good example of this). Anyway, better to control the machine remotely of the user doesn't know what he's doing.

Your comment did remind me that that consistency is exactly what a command line interface lacks most. Every program has to be learned individually from documentation before even attempting to use it. Nothing you learn from one program's interface is useful in controlling another's when it comes the command line.

For example,  if somebody is familiar with GCC, knows it inside and out, and you give him Clang to work with, then all his knowledge of the GCC interface isn't worth shit. He has to pick up the manual and learn the interface all over again. This process has to be repeated for every single piece of new CLI software.

GUIs on the other hand have lots of interface conventions which make it possible for the user to build on previous experience. Maybe he needs help the manual to learn MS Word, but once he's got it, he can pick up Libre Office and work without much additional effort required. This is consistency. 

[Cerebus]

alias ls='ls --color=auto'  which adds color to the file listing WHICH I HATE!  One of their color selections if effectively invisible if you have the slightest color deficiency.

No, you don't need any colour vision deficiencies for more than one of the standard colour choices to be unreadable. I have normal colour vision and there are some combinations I can't read all. In fact I have colour discrimination vision that is as good as it gets; I can't remember the name of it but I've taken the industry standard colour discrimination test (used to assess people for jobs where accurate colour matching and the ability to detect tiny differences in hue are important) and I got the maximum possible score. So it's not you, it's the idiot who chose those colours who's the problem.

[andersm]

For example,  if somebody is familiar with GCC, knows it inside and out, and you give him Clang to work with, then all his knowledge of the GCC interface isn't worth shit. He has to pick up the manual and learn the interface all over again. This process has to be repeated for every single piece of new CLI software.

That's not the best example, since Clang explicitly tries to be GCC-compatible, and there's some cross-pollination between the projects. Of course they're not completely identical, but for a large number of projects, Clang works fine as a drop-in replacement. There's even a clang-cl driver that provides compatibility with Visual C++.

[Cerebus]

I feel a lot of the CLI is better just comes down to it being easier to instruct on and it's also often more consistent.  Run this command rather than:
what GUI are you using, what version, do you have a icon that looks like a bird, yea, click the little arrow, what just came up etc...  WTF did you just click on??? Ummmm, was OK the ONLY button.... No I did not tell you to click on that.... WTF are you talking about, you click the button not me, next time 'Warning' appears don't click the Freakin OK button unless I tell you too...

I don't think a command line is much better in this regard.

In what regard? If you're talking about the same 'regard' as blacksheeplogic I think their position is unassailable, the command line is close to 100% consistent from Linux distribution to Linux distribution whereas the choice of GUI and the precise way it is configured is highly variable from Linux distribution to Linux distribution.

A single wrong character or space will cause a command to fail. And the incompetent user is just an likely to write the wrong command as to click the wrong button. Not to mention that the output of many CLI programs can be incomprehensible to a user who hasn't ever used it before ('ls' is a good example of this). Anyway, better to control the machine remotely of the user doesn't know what he's doing.

Oh, you're not talking in that regard, you're talking about something else entirely. The argument that "A single wrong character or space will cause a command to fail" is specious, put a wrong character or a wrong space into a field in a GUI program and that too will fail, in similar ways for similar use cases.

Your comment did remind me that that consistency is exactly what a command line interface lacks most. Every program has to be learned individually from documentation before even attempting to use it. Nothing you learn from one program's interface is useful in controlling another's when it comes the command line.

Just plain untrue. Learn that '-v' gives you more verbose output for one command and you've learned that fact for the 80% of other commands that use that flag. '-V' will usually produce a Version banner, '-l' a long form listing, '-r' will invoke recursion, '-a' will deliver all output,  '-q' will make the output as quiet as possible and so on. Although it is far from 100% there is a lot of consistency in flag and option usage across disparate commands.

For example,  if somebody is familiar with GCC, knows it inside and out, and you give him Clang to work with, then all his knowledge of the GCC interface isn't worth shit. He has to pick up the manual and learn the interface all over again. This process has to be repeated for every single piece of new CLI software.

clang is pretty much 100% gcc compatible, so much so that I don't notice that I'm using clang instead of gcc until it gives me a useful, helpful error message - then I know that it's clang.

GUIs on the other hand have lots of interface conventions which make it possible for the user to build on previous experience. Maybe he needs help the manual to learn MS Word, but once he's got it, he can pick up Libre Office and work without much additional effort required. This is consistency.

You what? The user interfaces of Word and Libre Office are completely different. The only user interface commonalities are those that are common to all GUI programs and are at the most basic level - a mouse does this, this is how to make a selection and so on. The remaining commonalities are underlying problem domain commonalities and that's hardly surprising as they are both word processing programs designed to deal with the same problem domain.

[Nominal Animal]

If you don't like the colors, either use ls --color=never or define the LS_COLORS environment variable with your preferred ones in your profile or shell preferences file.  The dircolors command will help you with this.

I find it idiotic to get so wound up about defaults.  It's your tool, take ownership of it, and bend it to your will!  Why waste time complaining about defaults you can change in less than a minute?  I would understand if it was a common complaint, but it isn't.

Depending on the terminals you use, you're not even limited to the 16 default colors (00;30 through 00;37 and 01;30 through 01;37 for foreground, 00;40-00;47,01;40-01;47 for background); many support 256 colors (38;5;n for foreground, 48;5;n for background) or even RGB colors (38;2;r;g;b for foreground, 48;2;r;g;b for background).

If you want to try the above sequences in your Bash or POSIX shell, run
    printf '\033[%smTEST\033[0m\n' 'sequence'

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

[SiliconWizard]

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

 

(Now if you take a look at Gnome 3, the team is probably the same crowd as the above guys... )

[Nominal Animal]

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

 

(Now if you take a look at Gnome 3, the team is probably the same crowd as the above guys... )

(And systemd, and the folks who keep saying that "Linux will not <X> until it <becomes more like Windows/Mac>, and the folks who say there are too many Linux distributions...)

I do get it, though.  Very few of us are taught to modify our tools to fit our needs, and are instead told to, well, almost revere them; keep them well, use them according to manufacturer guidelines, and so on.  This is exactly the huge change in attitude that is needed to get really comfortable and efficient when using Linux. 

[T3sl4co1l]

I do get it, though.  Very few of us are taught to modify our tools to fit our needs, and are instead told to, well, almost revere them; keep them well, use them according to manufacturer guidelines, and so on.  This is exactly the huge change in attitude that is needed to get really comfortable and efficient when using Linux. 

Stockholm syndrome, generalized.

Most users are not smart enough to create or adapt tools themselves.  It's effort enough to learn them at all, and once one usage pattern has been learned, there's no curiosity for other ways to do it, or more general approaches like creating their own tools.  The pattern freezes into god-given canon, and is shared to new users as such.  Questions such as "why can't we do X?" or "in Y way?" are dismissed.

It is what it is.  If you want your product to have the widest possible user base, you mustn't expect much from your users.  Things need to be obvious and spelled out, and behavior like above will simply happen.  Microsoft's riches are proof of this.

Tim

[Nominal Animal]

If you want your product to have the widest possible user base, you mustn't expect much from your users.

Yes, and that is exactly why Linux developers and long-time users like me are not at all interested in widening the Linux user base at all.

The main reason for anyone to switch to Linux is to get a better, more effective workflow for themselves or their users.  If you do it because of the price, you're gonna be disappointed.

[Karel]

Yes, and that is exactly why Linux developers and long-time users like me are not at all interested in widening the Linux user base at all.

I couldn't agree more. It would be a nightmare if the windows hordes should switch to Linux.

[T3sl4co1l]

If you want your product to have the widest possible user base, you mustn't expect much from your users.

Yes, and that is exactly why Linux developers and long-time users like me are not at all interested in widening the Linux user base at all.

There's an awful lot of them admiring that market share fraction, but not understanding why they can't make it rise further.

Tim

[SiliconWizard]

"Basic" users just not feel confident enough about their skills and knowledge to even think about customizing something they barely know how to use in one way. So that all comes down to your level of confidence I think.

That said, some approaches to software dev are taken to an extreme. Gnome 3 was a good example. There's a line between heavy customization and basic stuff. In Gnome 3, the user can't even customize very basic things using the control panel. Some things can be customized using a "tweak" application (which is already dubious per se), and that's still VERY limited. I mean, to even just change base UI colors, there's just no way outside of installing an extension (user themes) and changing the theme. All from this "tweak" thing. No way to change location of items (would require writing an extension), etc. I mean, that's VERY basic stuff that even a basic user would be able to handle without much issue there...

So the extreme, IMO, and current trend is not just about making things easier for most users, but also mainly about making things easier for developers (and I mean, the ones working on this one project, not caring about developers working on other, related projects!)

Which means: do not think it's all because of the dumb users. It's only partly for that. The other big part is how software dev is conducted these days, and how limiting user options means getting things on the market faster.

[andersm]

I find it idiotic to get so wound up about defaults.  It's your tool, take ownership of it, and bend it to your will!

Being able to customize is a poor excuse for bad defaults.

[edy]

As an aside, there are also a plethora of free Linux applications (many of them with CLI only implementations) that do a huge number of things that you will beat your head with a stick to try and find on a Windows machine. They exist but hard to find amid all the other software.

For example, recovering a bad SDCard from a camera... lots of Windows programs of various quality which all give you previews but require payment before you can recover your data. It wasn't until I went around looking at Linux options that I found a free command-line program (testdisk and photorec) that I realized they also compiled it for DOS/Windows, Mac and others. It was a tiny fraction of the download size, will read your entire SDCard and dump it into a recovery folder.

Another example... There are PDF tools that will let you extract, modify, swap pages around no problem, and also compress PDF's down to a fraction of their size with practically no difference in quality (pstopdf, pdf2ps). Many of them CLI-only, some with GUI front-ends (PDFSam). Again, there are probably Windows ports now but until you look at Linux, lots of Windows garbage will pop up first and it will be hard to cut through all the noise.

So my point is that you may have a harder time findings "gems" like these programs (and many many others) in the Windows world because there is so much other bloatware available. When you search around for the CLI-only Linux alternatives you find these free "gems" much more common and well documented by others who use them. Of course some may already be ported to other OSes but I try to go to Linux first (since that is what I use) since they are small, efficient and work well. It is not a limitation of the OS (like Windows/DOS), it is just that the Linux "culture" of open-source development, frequent CLI tool use and small avid user group spawns this type of contribution. I believe it was the case also with DOS years ago but as we got away from the CLI and Windows "dumbed down" the average user experience in favour of ease of use, we ended up with bigger bloatier wares all at a cost people were expected to be paying for convenience.

[Nominal Animal]

I find it idiotic to get so wound up about defaults.  It's your tool, take ownership of it, and bend it to your will!

Being able to customize is a poor excuse for bad defaults.

Just because you dislike the defaults, does not make them bad.

Like I said, I'd understand if more people complained about the defaults, or if there was a better suggestion, but there isn't.

[Cerebus]

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

Where do you get that from in rstofer saying he hates 'ls -color' and me agreeing with him that the default colour choices are ergonomically poor? You're putting words in both our mouths and that probably says more about your world view than it does about anybody else's. Nobody said anything even vaguely like what you imply.

[Nominal Animal]

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

Where do you get that from in rstofer saying he hates 'ls -color' and me agreeing with him that the default colour choices are ergonomically poor?

From the Snarky Semi-Sarcastic Tone store.

says more about your world view than it does about anybody else's

Don't hurt yourself when climbing back down from your high moral horse; it's a long way back to ground level.

[Nominal Animal]

Besides, if you really claim that the choices are ergonomically poor, then prove it: give me a LS_COLORS that is ergonomically better for most people.

It is not intended as a perfect solution, you see.  The defaults are not optimal for any specific person; they are just settings that are believed to work well to start with.  Those who think a more ergonomic color set exists only need to provide one.

If there truly is a more ergonomic color set as you claim, I'm 85% sure the maintainers of various distros and coreutils (which ls belongs to) would be exceedingly happy to change the defaults.  (The problem is that they should work for both dark and light backgrounds, as different terminals have different settings.  Some, like gnome-terminal and xterm, even let the user pick the background color themselves.  So, what you think is "more ergonomic", might have to be suffixed by "if you use the same color scheme I do, otherwise it'll be even worse than the default".)

What I believe has happened here, is that you dislike the colors and don't find they bring anything positive to the table, and because you think you know better than anybody else, you believe that your personal preference is more ergonomic.  A snarky response to that is warranted, to jolt you back to your senses.

[Cerebus]

Sheesh.  You guys probably also want everyone to use the same clothes, the same size displays, and the same fonts everywhere, so you feel comfortable, huh?  Configurability bad, forced uniformity good, eh?

Where do you get that from in rstofer saying he hates 'ls -color' and me agreeing with him that the default colour choices are ergonomically poor?

From the Snarky Semi-Sarcastic Tone store.

says more about your world view than it does about anybody else's

Don't hurt yourself when climbing back down from your high moral horse; it's a long way back to ground level.

Oh do grow up! You choose to read a non-existent  "Snarky Semi-Sarcastic Tone" into remarks made, and then you start throwing insults around when queried for the basis for your remarks. Wishing to not be pointlessly insulted and challenging someone who does so is not "climbing onto one's moral high horse", it's simply asking for civil behaviour, something you seem to be determined to prove that you're incapable of.

[rstofer]

There's an awful lot of them admiring that market share fraction, but not understanding why they can't make it rise further.

Tim

It's because, while it is possible to bend Linux CLI to your will, maybe it could be easier to do.  Can Linux exist without Google?  I doubt it!

It's because, even though I know the ls colors can be changed, every time I set up a system, I have to go research the fix once again.  I won't remember it because it is a one-and-done deal until it comes up yet again.  How about some code in .bashrc to make the change easy?

I have found one solution:  Comment out all the default aliases that bring color into the ls output.

It's kind of like the Unity desktop.  How arrogant to simply move the system buttons to the wrong side.  Initially, this could be fixed with some tweaking in the user files.  Now, just to square or cube arrogance, it is no longer possible to fix the arrogant move.  They're in the wrong place and they're going to stay.  Unfortunately, Unity is the default desktop for Ubuntu, one of the most popular distros.  Yes, there are options - after chasing the problem down a rathole on Google.

I'm pretty sure that, without Google, Linux would be in < 1% of desktops instead of < 2%.  At least 100% of the increased desktop usage of Linux is due to Google, in my view.


ETA:  I see Unity has been dropped as a desktop by Canonical.  Good riddance!

Note that I use Linux all the time for code development.  I have several variations on several machines and my Pi 4 is a pretty nice machine in its own right.  But there are times I really get annoyed.  I have pretty much settled on Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop since it's a lot like Win 10 and the system buttons are in the right place straight from the box.

I think *nix development stopped about BSD 4.3.  I have a couple of PiDP11s running BSD 2.11 (a LOT like 4.3) and, somehow, it gets along well on a monochrome terminal.  No colors at all!  No X-11 that I'm aware of, just a simple command line system with Pascal, C and Fortran.  Networking is the usual stuff so LPR works with vi and ed as the editors.  This is a GREAT environment - simple, uniform and clean.  Not necessarily productive when editing...

In directory listings executable files have an * at the end of the name.  Sub-directories have a / at the end of the sub-directory name.  There's something satisfying using a simple Unix system in the manner expected.