(Thinking out loud on a curriculum for migration to Linux…)
Linux is inherently a CLI; it doesn’t run without a console.
In yesterday’s post, we looked at the two primary implications of what it means when we say Linux is Open Source: (1) There is a large community of folks involved and they tend to be pretty helpful, but (2) your use of Linux remains largely DIY. A corollary to this is that you have a great many options in configuring your system and no one can give you exactly what you want.
Another very significant concept in running Linux is the command line. Unlike Windows, the graphical face of Linux is just an add-on. The best part of Linux remains hidden behind all those pretty pixels. It’s entirely possible to avoid using the CLI directly, but only if you have some help from someone else who does use it. No matter what kind of crazy problem arises, if someone can get a command line on the system, things can be fixed without having to reboot.
There are several hundred really fine applications available for the CLI. Most people have heard of Lynx, the plain text CLI browser. It’s capable of far more than most people could even guess. Sadly, it’s blocked by a large number of ill-informed website administrators, and some sites simply cannot be used because the entire content is graphical or served up using something like JavaScript. You can check the archives of discussions going back to the dawn of the Internet and find requests for all sorts of things for the CLI. Recently one of the most popular requests has been answers: a dedicated Linux CLI word processor called WordGrinder. There have long been spreadsheets, email clients and other CLI browsers, too. Because of the framebuffer capability of virtually all graphical chipsets, you can watch videos from a Linux console, too, using things like MPlayer without X. That’s because there are multiple different CLI tool sets.
Virtually everything Linux can do is possible on the CLI. Despite this, there are no valid projects to offer a CLI version for daily desktop use. Several projects were started over the years, but they never went anywhere. The most successful effort was INX, which is currently moribund. An obsolete version is still currently offered, but there is apparently no activity at all on the project. Apparently the folks who might use such a thing aren’t interested in something ready-made.
None of which changes the basic fact: Significant use of Linux is impossible without some use of the command line from time to time. Some of the most basic functions are best done from the command line. A great many GUI applications are simply CLI scripting with pretty colors, and frequently reducing the features possible in the process.
If you don’t use the CLI, you aren’t really using Linux.
