A Random Pattern

The ever-useful Ubuntu blog led me to a top-10 list on Ubuntu apps, posted on the also always-useful Lifehacker site. There was also a link from the Ubuntu blog to a write-up on the Washington Post.

There are some different views on software philosophy presented in the articles. I often see GNU/Linux users expressing this philosophy of “the CLI (Command Line Interface) method is better because …”, the truth is not so simple. I guess it depends on where you want GNU/Linux to go, though. I’m coming from the Windows world, yet fairly familiar with command-line, since I use it regularly at work. So in one sense I appreciate the power and speed of just typing in what I need done so that I can move on. I also love that if someone knows how to fix your problem, or wants to share an app, they can just say “type ‘blah blah blah’ and tell me what you see”. It’s much more definitive, powerful, and effective, not to mention faster, than trying to talk through a GUI (Graphical User Interface, which is what you stare at every day on the computer screen). At the same time, perhaps 80% of the commands are worthless to me long-term. I do too many varied tasks with the computer, and I want to enjoy and be effective in certain of those things. The best way to enable that? Eliminate the memory issue, by providing a GUI.
GNU/Linux – if you’re involved in Linux, you ought to read the attached link. I’ve seen the term GNU many times, knew what it stood for (GNU’s Not Linux), had some vague idea what it was…. I didn’t realize that what we mistakenly call Linux is really just the kernel, just one part of the whole GNU/Linux package. One thing I haven’t done is verified the facts in the linked article, so let me know if it’s actually wrong. Seems hard to imagine someone fighting that battle without the facts behind them, though.