console or GUI?

[zaiyon]

I couldn't find a thread like this in the forums (try search for "console", if you have some afternoons left to watch problems -_-)

So my question is, are you using the console most or do you prefer graphical UIs?


I myself usually don't prefer any of one over the other.
Console is of course very 1337 and so on, but I think that it is sometimes disturbing, if pasting and scrolling besides other stuff does not really work.

filesystem-browsing
I can actually not imagine doing this with a GUI like nautilus.
Nautilus is great, but it just takes a lot of time, and you cannot see what you are looking for fast.
You have to click somewhere to do a find and so on, and time is precious in my opinion.

interface
If you handle different windows, and want to look at what's happening in every window, screen is not a solution imho.
I use screen only for it's main purpose: starting a session, doing some work and go back to the session at a later time.

IM
When it comes to chatting, centericq is only usefull in fullscreen I think, because the always visible buddy lists consumes a lot of space.
But for a console Messenger, it is truly great, I have it on the livecd I created for beeing out of home. (I actually never used it not-at-home ..)

textprocessing
When it comes to text editing, I prefer the vim over every editor I know of. Just because it is (once you get used to it) very usable, and you can
truly save a lot of time with it's bunch of features.
It can also switch from his own clipboard to the Window Managers, and can be controlled with the mouse very easily. But I don't like that.

Using the mouse often consumes time, because you have to let go of the keyboard and grab it, that is imho not very nice.

email
I use mutt to read my email, because I could not find any GUI mua that could compete with it.


So editing, mail reading, (sometimes even surfing and chatting) and of course system administration is best done using a console I think.



When it comes to GUIs, I love to use lightweights, that are not overdone with strange buttons (I cannot handle most GUIs, because I get irritated of all that clickable stuff)

Porthole for example is nice. But when it comes to emerging, it is annoying that I cannot find a way to select multiple packages.
Otherwise, it is more user-friendly than browsing /usr/portage manually.
So I usually end up opening porthole to search for software and read descriptions, and add them all to a "emerge -av" list in a terminal.


Instant Messaing (even IRC) has a REAL advantage when doing with a GUI.
You can use your window managers "alert notice" or wtf it is called, to see the symbol blink in you taskbar.

That's also the reason why I use GUI Clients to play muds, even if I played with telnet-only for years.
Scrolling is easier, you notice it, if something happens and can react in an instant.


I also do most of the web browsing with GUI browsers (links2 -g, dillo or firefox).

Most GUI browsers lack in a compability for keyboard controlling, and I think that is a big problem. Firefox surely has some extension for it floating around, but I never found one.


So the "gui or console browsing" question makes me decide early, what I'm about to do, nearly everytime I want to browse the WWW.

If I'm going to sites of internet providers or new sites in general, I use a browser like firefox.
If I visit the site more often, (and there is not much css), I get used to console-browsing the page, if I know the page, and want to act fast.

I'm currently using gnome, and besides the fact that I lovei it, I hate it.
Ok, confusing... I hate it for being so complicates when it comes to setting for example an easy key-combination.
I just want "CTRL"+"ALT" to open up a terminal. I never found a way to do this.
So I always have to sit straight and grab my mouse, when I want to open up a new terminal.

This is the only reason why I stick to fluxbox or icewm most of the time, it is easily configurable through files with a rational syntax, everyone can understand by reading.

Gnome is great, but it is too much input for me often, I see GUIs over GUIs and cannot figure out where I am. I always forgot what I wanted to do, when I try to configure my system through GUIs, I'm probably just not made for it.
A nice configuration file with comments is the best configuration possibilty I can imagine.

Same is for KDE and DEs in general, that try to make a ksudo or gsudo or whatever form of every system tool.

I just don't like it, to write GUIs for such simple tasks, it is just makes no sense for me.

It is probably great for people who don't have much experience configuring GNU, but how can say learn anything using kinternet?

I eventually forget that there are really people out there, who don't want to learn ... but this is another reason to make GUIs not as complicated and feature possesed as possible.




Ok, and now I'm interested what you think

Ahm yeah, and excuse me if this thread is duplicated, I REALLY tried to find one to read (and not wait for) opinions.
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[Woll0r]

I don't use the console very often, only when X is acting weird. I use a GUI for almost everything.

[Sanome]

Some fair points there Zaiyon - atm, I tend to prefer the GUI for most matters - however, I predict speech recognition will radically alter how we interact with our surroundings over the next 70-100 years - it's pretty clear that a whole plethora of "tasks" would be considerably more efficient by being able to talk to our computers.

[MACSRULETHEWORLD]

i feel exactly the same way you do zaiyon. everything i do except for the obvious (photo-editing, web browsing, word processing [hard to format text via commandline]) is done on the CLI. right now the Fn keys are all filled up between naim, irssi, links, and emerge.

btw, if your looking for an uber minimized GUI, take a look at ctwm. been using it for about 2 days, its great, though it takes a while to customize properly (i still don't know how to turn of focus-follows-pointer)

[papal_authority]

[asiobob]

I'm totally the opposite. I love GUI if its the right thing for the right job. For an example I can use gtkpod to arrange playlists, sort them and sync them with my ipod 10 times faster than anyone can manage using CLI multiple tools. Evolution 2.2 is great in terms of visual managment, again something thats difficult to achieve on the command line.

Moving on, if I had to tar/untar a large file its straight to CLI. The GUI is actaully slower at this for some reason. Normally I watch a video by clicking on it, but if its screwy with no index or what ever mplayer is called from the command line with the rebuild index option.

I use xchat, I don't have to hunt my F* keys around. irssi is there if I ever need to chat from uni (via ssh )

[graphic23]

If it was not for Firefox and rxvt/aterm I would not use X at all. I have everything i need in the console. I can use mpc/mpd for music, etc. But I prefer X because of Firefox and I can have a lot of rxvt/aterms open and switch easier than Alt+Fx.
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Graphic23

[zxiiro]

i think irssi is a great console based irc client. once you figure out how it works it's really useful i think. XChat in my opinion is ugly looking.

[pjp]