Command line on Linux: Pro or Con?

[Mouldy Punk]

CLI is great for people who know how to use it. If you haven't got a clue about computers, GUIs are much more intuitive. I personally use a mix of GUI and CLI. CLI for either something overly complex with pipes and streams going all over the place or really simple 1 liners (apt-get install whatever). GUI is more for everyday kinda usage though. Doing stuff like launching a web browser, managing your email etc is just so much better using a GUI in my opinion.

[mclaren05]

BTW Windows Powershell is just as or even better than bash/terminal.

[markwolfe Veteran]

BTW Windows Powershell is just as or even better than bash/terminal.

Serious question: In what way?

I know that Microsoft has included a neutered command shell in the past, and that you could add in MS SFU (which I do on my work PC) to start doing some nifty things.

But how, exactly, is Powershell such a superior product?

[Melfster]

Powershell is indeed pretty powerful. In some ways its more powerful then bash in other ways it is a slightly inferior experience. For instance with Bash your piping clear text and with powershell your piping objects. Also the things people don't realize with powershell + wmi you have a whole-host information. There bad things such as the verbosity in the language and the fact its not really light weight as possible ...ie runs on the .net platform.

[Rudy]

Powershell is indeed pretty powerful. In some ways its more powerful then bash in other ways it is a slightly inferior experience. For instance with Bash your piping clear text and with powershell your piping objects. Also the things people don't realize with powershell + wmi you have a whole-host information. There bad things such as the verbosity in the language and the fact its not really light weight as possible ...ie runs on the .net platform.

the whole thing failed when they decided to use the .net framework. A CLI is supposed to be really light and fast, last time I tried Powershell it took longer to start than the command prompt and felt "heavy". The features are really good and much needed for windows though so kudos to MS for finally giving Windows a proper CLI

[ichi]

BTW Windows Powershell is just as or even better than bash/terminal.

Bash is just one of the available shells. If you like Powershell on Windows you can use Pash on linux ;)

[squiggy]

A shell in Windows just dosn't have the same "feel" to it as a Linux shell does,have no clue why though.lol

[Glowstick]

CLI's where the power lies. For one, it usually gives you more details, and also, you can pipe stuff, making everything more flexible.

Also, if you've computer illiterate clowns around, they're all going "woah".

BTW Windows Powershell is just as or even better than bash/terminal.

I tried to like it before my ****-Windows big bang. But its syntax is just goddamn unwieldy and verbose. All the object stuff makes it dogslow for large operations, too. I mean, just do a simple get-children (i.e. ls, dir, etc.) on a directory with more than a bunch of files.

*nix shells have decade(s) of history, development and fine-tuning to them. No way some silly botched up ksh clone (what PowerShell actually is, courtesy their lead developer) will beat that any time soon.

[mclaren05]

I tried to like it before my ****-Windows big bang. But its syntax is just goddamn unwieldy and verbose. All the object stuff makes it dogslow for large operations, too. I mean, just do a simple get-children (i.e. ls, dir, etc.) on a directory with more than a bunch of files.

I also think bash's syntaxis is wierd but I got use to it.

And slow? Must be your PC. I just did a ls on system32 and movies (200 files about 148GB) and it instantly displayed the contents.

[rpgfan]

For quick and dirty administrative purposes, I really can't put down the system-config-* stuff, especially when it comes to things like SELinux. *shudder*

I do prefer the CLI, however. It's a bit more difficult to use certain CLI apps compared to their graphical equivalents (Finch v.s. Pidgin), but I get used to it. I've recently discovered the power of `screen'. It makes getting things done via ssh a lot faster! ^_^

Edit: As for Windows PowerShell, I do like the concept they have, but the fact that there can be two or three different command aliases for the built-in commands is annoying, especially when I try to use things like the MinGW version of `ls' (its in my PATH), and the command alias for the `Get-Children' command overrides it! That makes me really angry!

(PS)$ ls -l

Get-ChildItem : Missing an argument for parameter 'LiteralPath'. Specify a parameter of type 'System.String[]' and try again.

At line:1 char:6

+ ls -l <<<<

(PS)$ echo "Curse you, PowerShell! I said `LS -L'!!!"

:(

Edited November 19, 2008 by rpgfan