'Linux'... First Introduction !!

[hazeanderson]

Thanks for pointing out pgrep (and I agree that sudo pkill is surely dangerous but have you tried sudo psDooM yet?) I was only trying to show how small ideas can be coupled together to form larger ones, I should have picked another example but ...

The problem with trying to show `The Way` is that the best examples only apply to the business rules at hand ... AKA The Job.

As much as I love using this command, dragging and dropping files is just more intuitive:

find /Volumes/LOSSLESS/ -name *.m4a -exec ffmpeg -i "{}" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -vsync 2 -f mp3 "{}.mp3" \;

[CatalinaWOW]

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. 

Things were bubbling pretty quickly in that decade.  Many of the differences were influenced by personal preference of those involved since they were very small development teams.  Others were influenced by legal issues as all of these were being monetized to one degree or another.  With food fights over who owned which improvement and whether they had the right to use the base system that was being improved.  As I recall AT&T was very ambivalent about Unix wavering back and forth between full proprietary and some form of open source.  They licensed it for educational use at one point leading to Berkely Unix.

[Nusa]

Dragging and dropping required both a pointing device (invented, but no market penetration prior to mid-1980's) and a graphics interface (ditto).
The command line was THE way to do things for a long time, and for many things still is. VI was written without the mouse in mind...which is why it's still easy to use without having to touch one, even today. Not that I personally had a choice, since I didn't have a mouse when I learned it.

[Halcyon]

Glenn, I was a DOS/Windows person all my life up until a few years ago. I was a sys admin for one of Australia's largest telcos back in the day. I even ridiculed "open source nerds" back then.

I WAS WRONG.

I exclusively use FreeBSD and Linux for everything from my servers to my everyday desktop computer and I have never looked back.
I found that using Linux command line wasn't all that different or difficult. I actually found my knowledge of MS-DOS syntax and understanding how commands work helped immensely and it only took a week or so to pick up. I find myself typing ls or sudo in a Windows command prompt now at work (which gets a little annoying), but these days, Linux is leaps and bounds ahead of what Windows 10 has become. Windows 10 is a pile of poo even compared to Windows XP.

With distros such as Ubuntu, MX Linux, Manjaro and many others, putting so much development into their products, they are just about ready for the mainstream user market. Even gaming on Linux has come such a long way and it's only getting better. All of the games I play run natively on Linux or seamlessly in WINE (granted, I'm not a huge gamer). Gone are the days where you have to faff around trying to get video card drivers to work properly, it's literally just click through the install options.

I tried probably 10 different Linux distros before finally settling with MX Linux as my daily driver. This is what works for me. My advice is: Don't listen to the fanboys, test different products and find out what works best for you. Keep at it and I think you'll like what you see.

[Zucca]

Done! I will listen to you!

My new PC will have linux on bare metal and a VM with windows for emergencies.
My most concerns were the driver in Linux, but times are changed.

I am still surprised that big SW companies like Adobe did not pulled the trigger yet.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Done! I will listen to you!

My new PC will have linux on bare metal and a VM with windows for emergencies.
My most concerns were the driver in Linux, but times are changed.

I am still surprised that big SW companies like Adobe did not pulled the trigger yet.

Adobe will never run anything natively on Linux and be actively promoted. If they did, the community pressure would be for them to unveil the holy grail software code. That company's code bases are such a hot mess the laughter would be too embarrassing.

[nctnico]

Done! I will listen to you!

My new PC will have linux on bare metal and a VM with windows for emergencies.
My most concerns were the driver in Linux, but times are changed.

I am still surprised that big SW companies like Adobe did not pulled the trigger yet.

Adobe will never run anything natively on Linux and be actively promoted. If they did, the community pressure would be for them to unveil the holy grail software code. That company's code bases are such a hot mess the laughter would be too embarrassing.

Why would they need to release their source code? There is no obligation to do that. In the past Adobe used to have Linux versions of their software but it seems they have pulled to plug on that. A pity because the PDF reader from Adobe worked really well on Linux (compared to the open source alternatives).

[Ed.Kloonk]

Done! I will listen to you!

My new PC will have linux on bare metal and a VM with windows for emergencies.
My most concerns were the driver in Linux, but times are changed.

I am still surprised that big SW companies like Adobe did not pulled the trigger yet.

Adobe will never run anything natively on Linux and be actively promoted. If they did, the community pressure would be for them to unveil the holy grail software code. That company's code bases are such a hot mess the laughter would be too embarrassing.

Why would they need to release their source code? There is no obligation to do that. In the past Adobe used to have Linux versions of their software but it seems they have pulled to plug on that. A pity because the PDF reader from Adobe worked really well on Linux (compared to the open source alternatives).

Because binary blobs are sooo last decade. 


 

[GlennSprigg]

I tried probably 10 different Linux distros before finally settling with MX Linux as my daily driver. This is what works for me. My advice is: Don't listen to the fanboys, test different products and find out what works best for you. Keep at it and I think you'll like what you see.

Thanks Halcyon.  Yep, I've decided that the 'MX Linux' you suggested will be the one!
I've read all the reviews, what it does, including all the Hows and Whys, and it makes sense!! 

[GlennSprigg]

P.S.  To some other responders from page 1/2, I wasn't 'ranting' 
It was more tongue-in-cheek from a newbie in the Linux field.
I also hadn't thought about the pre-dating from DOS. Thanks for the education. 
It's just totally new to me, and is obviously a good O.S.  Just a new learning curve.

[Ed.Kloonk]

P.S.  To some other responders from page 1/2, I wasn't 'ranting' 
It was more tongue-in-cheek from a newbie in the Linux field.
I also hadn't thought about the pre-dating from DOS. Thanks for the education. 
It's just totally new to me, and is obviously a good O.S.  Just a new learning curve.

Keep a notebook (or indeed a text file) handy with the console commands you find useful as you find them. Date the entries. Every so often look back though the entries. If there's still something not understood, ask.

If you really wanna dig deep into the historical whys, there's a book called The art of unix programming. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

 

[SparkyFX]

A few hints for learners:

• there are various shells with different features, the most popular (and default) is probably BASH.
• there used to be a set of aliases to help DOS users to learn the BASH, can't find a package, but there are countless tutorials online
  
• if you just need to navigate quickly or are afraid of breaking something due to a typo, consider installing the Midnight Commander (mc), it also gets stuff done
• should you find yourself in the situation to need some of these features on Windows, check out cygwin.
• check the manpages of commands, most options are so intuitive that you can learn it fast

[Cerebus]

If you really wanna dig deep into the historical whys, there's a book called The art of unix programming. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

Better still, primary sources:

"The UNIX Time-Sharing System" by D. M. Ritchie and K. Thompson
A paper published in the Communications of the ACM describing UNIX (15 pages, 1974). Worthwhile reading for anybody who wants to understand UNIX-like systems, in particular it concisely covers the basic philosophy of UNIX (TL;DR - everything is a file).

The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System by D. M. Ritchie
A short history of UNIX (circa 9 pages, 1979)

[GlennSprigg]

. . . . . .
The problem with trying to show `The Way` is that the best examples only apply to the business rules at hand ... AKA The Job.

As much as I love using this command, dragging and dropping files is just more intuitive:

find /Volumes/LOSSLESS/ -name *.m4a -exec ffmpeg -i "{}" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -vsync 2 -f mp3 "{}.mp3" \;

That's what I mean. I'm sure lines such as the above, (or parts of it!), will eventually become
perfectly clear, you state that... dragging and dropping files is just more intuitive...
So why not use the GUI if it's available? I understand the CLI is more 'powerful', it 'seems' like,
(and 'please' don't anyone be offended!), that it is a learned 'Right-Of-Passage' to use the CLI.

I'll get there... and will learn 'both' ways. And one day I will look back on it all, (life permitted!),
and wonder what I was worried about! 

[Ed.Kloonk]

. . . . . .
The problem with trying to show `The Way` is that the best examples only apply to the business rules at hand ... AKA The Job.

As much as I love using this command, dragging and dropping files is just more intuitive:

find /Volumes/LOSSLESS/ -name *.m4a -exec ffmpeg -i "{}" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -vsync 2 -f mp3 "{}.mp3" \;

That's what I mean. I'm sure lines such as the above, (or parts of it!), will eventually become
perfectly clear, you state that... dragging and dropping files is just more intuitive...
So why not use the GUI if it's available? I understand the CLI is more 'powerful', it 'seems' like,
(and 'please' don't anyone be offended!), that it is a learned 'Right-Of-Passage' to use the CLI.

I'll get there... and will learn 'both' ways. And one day I will look back on it all, (life permitted!),
and wonder what I was worried about! 

Dragging and dropping files in the GUI? Sure.

The command line above appears to be something that is used often rather than a once off. I read it as finding any *.m4a files in directory /volumes/LOSSLESS/ and convert them into mp3 files using ffmpeg.

The exec command runs ffmpeg, feeding in the found files -i "{}"

The -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -vsync 2 -f mp3  tells ffmpeg the audio codec is a module libmp3lame. Bitrate is 192k, the -f mp3 tells ffmpeg that the output container is mp3

The "{}.mp3" \; tells ffmpeg to append .mp3 to the end of each processed file and the slash semicolon tells the interpreter that the exec part of the line has ended.

Now, you -could- use a GUI wrapper program that lets you pick the input files and set the output parameters, but if you find a need to quickly feed music into a portable device every day, the extra work in knocking up a batch command or even a batch file sometimes is worth the effort. Here's the beauty: most polished GUI music converters can show you the command line that is has built for you and when the time comes to automate things, you can copy/paste the command to manipulate the files rather than the files themselves.

Clear as mud?

[brucehoult]

From around 1990. On a Mac. Both regular MacOS MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) and A/UX provided a standard way (called "Commando") to build command lines for command line tools using a dialog box. As I recall, you typed command-return instead of just return, or added an ellipsis after the command name.

[nctnico]

For some operations Linux doesn't seem to have a piece of software. Creating an image from a CD-ROM/DVD for example. The commandline command is so short that it makes no sense to create a tool.

[Ed.Kloonk]

From around 1990. On a Mac. Both regular MacOS MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) and A/UX provided a standard way (called "Commando") to build command lines for command line tools using a dialog box. As I recall, you typed command-return instead of just return, or added an ellipsis after the command name.

Yes. Yes!

I recommend going commando. Especially in the warmer months.

[brucehoult]

For some operations Linux doesn't seem to have a piece of software. Creating an image from a CD-ROM/DVD for example. The commandline command is so short that it makes no sense to create a tool.

There are plenty of tools to try to help prevent you making "arguments in the wrong order" mistakes with DiskDestroyer.

Not that "if"' and "of" seem all that difficult to me. The main error  mode is forgetting up the block size.

[Ed.Kloonk]

One thing I've noticed recently is the distro ISO instructions are starting to include DD as a way to copy to a memory stick.

DD used to be something you never told newbies about. Ever.

Times have changed.

[GlennSprigg]

For some operations Linux doesn't seem to have a piece of software. Creating an image from a CD-ROM/DVD for example. The commandline command is so short that it makes no sense to create a tool.

Wow... That surprises me. I would have thought that Linux Builds would have had something like
the various disk creator software for Windows, to copy/extract/build the likes of '.ISO' files ? 

[Cerebus]

In case it's not clear, nctnico's implication was that there is usually no GUI tool for imaging CDs installed by default on most distros, whereas there are command line tools installed by default - dd being the archetypical way of imaging a CD (e.g. "dd if=/dev/sr0 of=image.iso" in its simplest form). There are in fact a number of GUI CD burners/rippers available for Linux (e.g. brasero and many others).

[localkorner]

I've just recently taken the plunge into the Linux world with Ubuntu and I must say, i'm loving it!

I know not all distro's are as 'out of the box' friendly on standard PC hardware as windows, so I went with a vendor from Ubuntu's list 'pre-installed' list https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuPre-installed

Lazy swine, I hear you cry Sure, but it didn't cost me anything for installation and I bought the machine pretty much threadbare so I can use up some old RAM and drives I had lying around https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-prodesk-600-g2-sff-configure-to-order

It is taking a little bit of getting used to the interface on Ubuntu, but I always expected that to be the case after being in the Windows world my whole life. But the speed and simplicity of a Linux OS really impresses me and I have no plans to go back at this point.

 

[brucehoult]

I've just recently taken the plunge into the Linux world with Ubuntu and I must say, i'm loving it!

I'm an Apple guy from way back, and still run a 2011 17" MacBook Pro and iPhone, but everything else I use is Ubuntu or Debian, from Raspberry Pi to HiFive Unleashed, to Thinkpad, to home 32 core Threadripper, to corporate servers and AWS instances.

It's fantastic to have complete command line utilities and options compatibility, C source code compatibility, scripting compatibility with *zero* issues right across the computing range, on half a dozen different 32 bit and 64 bit ISAs.

[vwestlife]

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.