Forget design. I want performance and reliability. GUI's failed to deliver. Some users avoid the command line at all costs. I avoid GUI's at all costs. I've found the costs are minimal while the benefits are substantial.
Negative. An opinion from someone who finds the value in GUIs despite knowing about the alternatives. Use what makes you productive, but for MOST people, that is going to be a well done GUI over a text based solution. For me, I don't want to spend time configuring or fixing my email solution, I just want to login, get/read/reply to my email, and move on to real work. Don't confuse your opinion with what is "best" or "most effective" for most people, even developers and those ultra-familiar with the terminal.
1. all details, functions, settings options, etc are explicitly laid out
2. I don't need to remember the command for a setting, nor look it up. I can change a setting with just a couple mouse clicks.
True, there are situations when these are both false, but a well-designed GUI will provide both of these benefits, and maybe even default settings. Enough to get a new user off the ground or enough to give advanced users a hint about why a feature doesn't work right.
I mean everything has a cost but quadrupling the number of users is the benefit.
There’s no reason why an app can’t work as well either via command line or via GUI. The whole point of architecturing your software is so you don’t write something kludgy.
truth, but its up to us as programmers to make it better by combining logic and design. for mostly employment reason etc.... but i prefer low gui and more command line in exp, more flexible/powerful than any gui exp :)
I hope in the near future someone builds a GUI using this. Not that the command line is some scary thing I avoid, but with a GUI, you have the luxury of not having to fiddle too much. GUIs are intuitive and also a luxury few can afford to build, which is why I tend towards using them.
I'm the opposite, I avoid GUIs. I use pretty much only the shell, and text-oriented programs. I use a graphical desktop just to manage my terminal windows. The only other application I use daily is a web browser.
I guess maybe because I started with computers before there were GUIs that is what felt normal.
Couldn't agree more. A good GUI beats a TUI any day. They have the potential to be far more intuitive as well as more aesthetically appealing. Not to mention that for some of us, a GUI gives far greater confidence than a TUI.
For example, I prefer to do package management from the command line, but if I'm editing partitions, I feel the urge to use a GUI like Disk Utility or gparted. For this task, GUIs feel safer for a few reasons. I feel like I can better visualize the changes being made to the drive, and it seems like there are more speed bumps to prevent dumb mistakes.
I do think GUIs can learn a few tricks from TUIs. TUIs are often more responsive and usually provide better keyboard driven workflows.
Ultimately my preference for GUIs probably reflects what I'm used to. To paraphrase Jef Raskin, there are no intuitive UIs, only familiar ones.
This is how I feel about computing in general. GUIs in general were a mistake. Vim is fucking awesome, and there's no replacing a shell and the myriad CLI utilities you have at your disposal. The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork.
GUIs generally represent the sacrifice of power and automation for approachability by the lowest common denominator.
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.
Until I can chain GUI apps together for my specific needs with some combination of pipes and basic logic, I'm inclined to disagree. GUIs can be really nice for specific apps, but they are often terrible as part of an easily repeated and fast workflow.
I suspect most Linux users don't "hate GUIs" but hate the garbage that GUIs enable, like pointless/stupid transition animations, hard to see flat UIs, dumbing down of preference/setting dialogs, etc.
Most GUI design is focused on dumbing things down for first time and beginner users, and most Linux users don't fall into that demographic.
If a GUI helps me get my work done faster then I'm all for it. If the GUI gets in my way and wastes my time then I'm not going to use it.
Most of the guis are crap because everybody who builds them thinks that a GUI should just be a more or less a visual representation of the command line.
I just want to achieve an outcome. An argument could also be made that GUIs are a pita because you have to spend too much time discovering when you could just read the manual and do the task.
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