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I prefer the look of terminal applications. Additionally I get more control over the fonts and colors. Unlike most Windows applications, which have no customi

I prefer the look of terminal applications. Additionally I get more control over the fonts and colors. Unlike most Windows applications, which have no customization (generally) and no consistency.

piyush_soni 6y ago
Some would definitely like terminal applications more, but the fact that on Linux by default it comes up to be terminal apps says a lot about the platform. One can just go and compare the ProcMon on Linux and Windows. Probably over the years people have figured out that there are so many hurdles in making basic GUI applications work on it? Some random Linux distribution would always complain about missing some random dependency, and the users would get totally confused, so developers are like let's not even go that way. Half the times Anti-aliasing wouldn't work on text fonts and mouse cursors and what not. I agree Windows applications don't have a lot of consistency as well, but it's at least better than Linux where half are on terminal only, and half have some kind of casually created GUI.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Terminal applications are more open to automation - something that Linux excels in. GUI applications are far harder to automate. In the case of ProcMon I'm not sure there's a case for automation, although happy to be proven wrong. Agreed about the casually created GUIs on Linux, but I'm happy someone has put the effort into them.
  - piyush_soni 6y ago
    Actually, our company's product supports both GUI and a text user interface so everything can be automated as well as used via GUI (and that's on both Windows and Linux versions). I'm not sure why more people don't do that.
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      This x1000
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      Linux servers don't (and shouldn't) have GUI libraries installed. A procmon-like tool would then be a server component, that'd be invoked over, maybe, a ssh session, and a client component that'd expose that functionality over a GUI or a web page. That's a lot of work for a simple tool when a text-based terminal interface solves the problem very neatly. Personally, I'd do it with strace, sysdig or something else that would spit a long text file I could parse rather than updating a terminal screen.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  The only GUIs worth using are a terminal and a browser. Everything else is garbage, and will only degrade over time . This is a developer tool, and no Linux developer worth a damn uses GUIs for anything.
  - piyush_soni 6y ago
    That disdain right there for people that use a GUI application - that's what I don't understand (and I was talking about in another comment). I have quite a few people in my company who believe the same, and I know damn well that they're not any better programmers than the ones who don't (even if they might like to believe that). It's like using a console somehow makes them a better developer than others, it's a laughable assumption. If a GUI condenses 5 steps into 1, there is no shame in using that. The key is to know when to use a GUI v/s when to use a CLI. Good luck using a command line spreadsheet software and producing good results in time ;). I am a little surprised by your belief that only two classes of GUI software in the entire world are useful (because you use those two?), everything else is garbage. :)
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      > If a GUI condenses 5 steps into 1 That's your big assumption. It doesn't happen very often and, more often than not, those 5 steps you could do with one command without your hands leaving the keyboard will require a couple clicks of the mouse at not-always repeating spots on the screen. Terminal users aren't masochists. They use terminals because it makes the work easier. I use an IDE to write Java code. I use Emacs to write Python code because it's easier to me. I use a terminal to investigate because it's much simpler than attaching a GUI-based IDE to a running remote machine. And nobody seriously uses text based spreadsheets. We I need to crunch numbers or reads lots of data, I use Jupyter and pandas.

I prefer the look of terminal applications. Additionally I get more control over the fonts and colors. Unlike most Windows applications, which have no customization (generally) and no consistency.

piyush_soni 6y ago

Some would definitely like terminal applications more, but the fact that on Linux by default it comes up to be terminal apps says a lot about the platform. One can just go and compare the ProcMon on Linux and Windows. Probably over the years people have figured out that there are so many hurdles in making basic GUI applications work on it? Some random Linux distribution would always complain about missing some random dependency, and the users would get totally confused, so developers are like let's not even go that way. Half the times Anti-aliasing wouldn't work on text fonts and mouse cursors and what not. I agree Windows applications don't have a lot of consistency as well, but it's at least better than Linux where half are on terminal only, and half have some kind of casually created GUI.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
Terminal applications are more open to automation - something that Linux excels in. GUI applications are far harder to automate. In the case of ProcMon I'm not sure there's a case for automation, although happy to be proven wrong. Agreed about the casually created GUIs on Linux, but I'm happy someone has put the effort into them.
- piyush_soni 6y ago
  Actually, our company's product supports both GUI and a text user interface so everything can be automated as well as used via GUI (and that's on both Windows and Linux versions). I'm not sure why more people don't do that.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    This x1000
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Linux servers don't (and shouldn't) have GUI libraries installed. A procmon-like tool would then be a server component, that'd be invoked over, maybe, a ssh session, and a client component that'd expose that functionality over a GUI or a web page. That's a lot of work for a simple tool when a text-based terminal interface solves the problem very neatly. Personally, I'd do it with strace, sysdig or something else that would spit a long text file I could parse rather than updating a terminal screen.
caymanjim 6y ago
The only GUIs worth using are a terminal and a browser. Everything else is garbage, and will only degrade over time . This is a developer tool, and no Linux developer worth a damn uses GUIs for anything.
- piyush_soni 6y ago
  That disdain right there for people that use a GUI application - that's what I don't understand (and I was talking about in another comment). I have quite a few people in my company who believe the same, and I know damn well that they're not any better programmers than the ones who don't (even if they might like to believe that). It's like using a console somehow makes them a better developer than others, it's a laughable assumption. If a GUI condenses 5 steps into 1, there is no shame in using that. The key is to know when to use a GUI v/s when to use a CLI. Good luck using a command line spreadsheet software and producing good results in time ;). I am a little surprised by your belief that only two classes of GUI software in the entire world are useful (because you use those two?), everything else is garbage. :)
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > If a GUI condenses 5 steps into 1 That's your big assumption. It doesn't happen very often and, more often than not, those 5 steps you could do with one command without your hands leaving the keyboard will require a couple clicks of the mouse at not-always repeating spots on the screen. Terminal users aren't masochists. They use terminals because it makes the work easier. I use an IDE to write Java code. I use Emacs to write Python code because it's easier to me. I use a terminal to investigate because it's much simpler than attaching a GUI-based IDE to a running remote machine. And nobody seriously uses text based spreadsheets. We I need to crunch numbers or reads lots of data, I use Jupyter and pandas.