How much do you use a terminal?

Khannie

A comment in the 10.04 thread had me thinking.....I've reached the point where I prefer to use a terminal for most things. I would say that 90% of my non-browsing time is spent in front of a terminal. I'll generally move files that way, encode videos, reboot, even going as far as resizing pictures by command line.

What about you? Do you prefer the graphical equivalent? Or is it terminal all the way?

eightcell

A poll maybe?

Terminal all the way!
Never really been a fan of the fancy graphics, running XFCE myself and always have a terminal with a few tabs open. I tend to SSH alot and also use text based apps like rtorrent and scripts like youtube-dl etc etc.

Pygmalion

I ssh a lot, and tend to do a ton of file management stuff in the terminal.
I use Yakuake (a drop-down terminal, a la Quake), so it's generally easier for me to just <F12>df -h<enter><F12> than to do the equivalent with a GUI.
It comes more naturally to me now for most things to be honest, I want to know how much flac files I have in a folder I just "ls -R1 Music/ | grep .flac | wc -l" without thinking :P

Still use GUI apps for web browsing, email and RSS though (occasionally a text editor, have yet to get fully acquainted with Vim although I'm liking it more and more).
Thinking I'll give mutt and some console RSS reader another go at some point.

Khannie

Pygmalion wrote: »

I want to know how much flac files I have in a folder I just "ls -R1 Music/ | grep .flac | wc -l" without thinking :P

Tip for the day...

ls -R1 Music/ | grep -c ".flac"

Sexeh!

edit: I've heard good things about Yakauke though. I have a keyboard shortcut (ctrl+alt+N) for a gnome terminal. Love it.

Khannie

eightcell wrote: »

A poll maybe?

I haven't the powers to go back and add one.

Skrynesaver

I do all my work in the terminal, if I'm using Gnome, and there isn't a maximised console, I'm dossing.

I do a lot of admin and coding so the terminal is my natural environment (It was the only environment when I started using computers so there was no initial shock coming to terms with it).

Keep plugging with vim, you'll grow to love it a fast editor that loads instantly spoils you for any other environment. (Though I have a tendency to write convoluted Perl one-liners and switching between emacs keys in bash and vim can get irritating.)

EDIT: Yes I know about

set -o vi

but it doesn't feel natural as I learnt bash with emacs bindings

niallb

Terminal all the way except for web browsing
Even if I use a GUI app, I often launch it from the command line - you get more feedback that way.

screen allows me suspend what I'm doing and come back to it later,
or leave it running. lftp will background itself to finish downloads of http/ftp/sftp urls.
(al)pine gives me access to my mail if I can't get to a browser, though elinks
is a decent browser for many purposes.

Since I discovered I can access the X cut/paste buffer from vim using "+y and "+p
I haven't even considered looking forward :-)

Really enjoying hexxeh's build of Chromium on my netbook,
as it's just a browser with a terminal available via CTRL-ALT-T
Makes me realise that that's all I use 90% of the time anyway.

The terminal saves resources in a big way.
I can remember sharing one machine between 3 users simultaneously,
with one person directly logged on, and 2 others via ancient serial terminals
all working at comfortable speed.
That one machine was a 486 with 16MB of RAM.
Both of the users who preferred terminals back then are currently in this thread and still do:-)

pickarooney

I use the terminal for installing software, scripting, copying photos from my camera, tagging mp3s, moving files, troubleshooting and process monitoring. For the rest I use GUI apps (multimedia playback, browsing, office work, video editing...)

Truthfully I spend about 60% of my time browsing and 30% watching video files so the actual amount of time spent in the terminal is much less than that using a graphical interface.

Pygmalion

Khannie wrote: »

ls -R1 Music/ | grep -c ".flac"

:eek:, this is why I need to learn to read the man page before doing this stuff.

Also this thread has got me curious to see if I'd be able to wean myself off the remaining GUI apps I use (apart from Chrome, that is), may start switching over if I can get a mail client set up (mutt looks hard to set up with more than one account, although maybe I'm just not looking hard enough).
Hopefully I'll have more success with the man pages of these :P

Skrynesaver

niallb wrote: »

I can remember sharing one machine between 3 users simultaneously,
with one person directly logged on, and 2 others via ancient serial terminals
all working at comfortable speed.
That one machine was a 486 with 16MB of RAM.
Both of the users who preferred terminals back then are currently in this thread and still do:-)

As I remember it Phoebe only had 8M:)

And he's not kidding about the ancient serial terms, one was a Digital VT102 pod with "futuristic" 70's design, the other had a metal case, it may have been a Digital box also. Ahh the good old days, building a network from skips.

/me off in a reverie of nostalgia

loldog

For quick and thorough searching, like

locate *.mp3

you can't beat the terminal.

However, if you're using Update Manager, you get see details about the updates, which you wouldn't see in the terminal.

So for me, I use both.

This is my top ten commands in history:

history | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10

    211 sudo
     34 top
     24 htop
     18 locate
     15 kill
     14 killall
     12 ls
     12 gksudo
     11 ps
     10 cat

.

Pygmalion

loldog wrote: »

This is my top ten commands in history:

history | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10

    211 sudo
     34 top
     24 htop
     18 locate
     15 kill
     14 killall
     12 ls
     12 gksudo
     11 ps
     10 cat

.

Mine is:

202 cat
    141 gwenview
    129 ls
    125 vim
     48 cd
     36 du
     34 python3
     34 brick
     21 tserver
     18 sudo

But I wouldn't say that's entirely accurate, as generally I won't use cat unless I'm grepping, or sorting or the like (true of ls a lot of the time too).
I used this command

history | awk '{ gsub("\\|", "\n11111"); print }' | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10

As above but replaces a pipe character with a newline and "11111" (to get the command into the second column, nasty hack but I don't know awk :P) and got:

202 cat
    162 wc
    141 gwenview
    129 ls
    125 vim
    122 grep
     53 sort
     52 awk
     48 cd
     36 du

Dartz

Terminal is a godsend for certain jobs... like mass file renames, or the glorious sed when you have to go through a bunch of PHP scripts and change the database they point to.

Do in 30 seconds what might actually take up to a half hour manually opening, editing, saving and close each and every file.

I don't do much in the way of shell scripting, mind...

niallb

or changing the size of 200 pictures, or changing them all from jpg to png, or changing the transparent color and palette of an entire directory of images...

evercloserunion

Nethack ftw!

Apart from that I don't use the terminal all that much, every now and again there are instances where I need to rename/move/delete files en masse.

Also, because I use Yakuake, it's generally quicker for me to F12 and enter a command than to find the corresponding command via the GUI. Of course, when I use a command often enough I stick it on my desktop so it's only one click away.

The truth is I don't have any interesting enough uses for my laptop to merit heavy use of the command line!

pickarooney

Mine is a very basic list, with just one alias and a script amongst the bog-standard commands

124 cd
79 ls
34 ll
30 makeid3dir
28 more
22 mv
19 rm
13 vi
13 sudo
12 abcde

Orion

Terminal for anything file related. Much easier that way. Browsing and gaming is gui and office work in OO ofc.

75 ls
     61 cd
     56 ssh
     37 wakeonlan
     34 scp
     33 locate
     31 ping
     27 top
     23 sudo
     21 exit

And on my media PC:

144 cd
     81 ls
     79 sudo
     70 sftp
     64 exit
     16 ssh
      6 ./configure
      5 mkdir
      5 make
      5 df

Tillotson

This is from the tmux session on the server:

     86 gccme
     79 ls
     69 ./a.out
     50 cd
     32 git
     23 exit
     18 rm
     17 vim
     14 cp
     12 erl

Looks like 80% of my compiles are successful
I'm currently flip-flopping between win7 and ubuntu on the laptop until college finishes up. The only non-terminal apps I use on linux are firefox and gpodder.

evercloserunion

My history is fairly unimpressive.

58 ls
     42 python3
     39 cd
     24 echo
     20 sudo
     20 mplayer
     17 cat
     10 supertux2
     10 ..
      9 ps

Sherifu

/Subscribing to this for later

I'd say i use the GUI more than the terminal probably 60:40

Depends what i'm doing really, some things are just a lot faster in the terminal.

Khannie

Fairly boring list here too:

96 ls
     95 cd
     32 sudo
     30 ssh
     19 mdadm
     15 rm
     13 less
     12 locate
     10 scp
      9 mplayer

Eliot Rosewater

I don't use the terminal an awful lot; just for C programming and a bit of messing around and learning (as evidenced by "man" being number 3 below!). The main problem I have is a lack of confidence in myself. I'm afraid to move files using the terminal in case I screw everything up

106 cd
     97 ls
     48 man
     29 ccr
     21 gnuplot
     20 mkdir
     17 sudo
     17 cat
     12 vi
      7 echo

sKeith

heres 4 boring lists.

     63 ls	    141 ls	     79 ls	      92 ls
     61 cd	    136 cd	     56 cd	      90 cd
     36 du	     26 mount        13 exit	      49 ee
     33 ee	     21 ee	     13 ee	      37 ifconfig
     19 cat	     18 umount       9 rm	      33 exit
     13 rm	     18 df	     8 date	      15 find
     12 find	     17 rm	     7 znc	      14 mdb-sql
     11 mkdir        12 cat	     6 complete       13 locate
     11 chown        10 exit	     5 ps	      12 apt-get
     11 chmod        9 dorsync       4 ping	       9 mount

As you can see, my editer of choice is ee, if it isn't available i complie it myself, on every machine i work on. http://www.users.uswest.net/~hmahon/

Jonathan

86 ls
     53 cd
     22 rsync
     21 [self made alias to ssh to one of my servers]
     21 john
     20 ssh
     20 nano
     17 exit
     12 ps
     12 bg

Mycroft H

new ubuntu box

130 sudo
     25 cd
     15 sh
     15 exit
      9 chmod
      7 winetricks
      7 print
      6 man
      6 ddrescue

had a hard disk to rescue too

[-0-]

Terminal all the way except for web browsing. I'm always ssh'd into my boxes in the states and I use SILC and IRC from those.

Locally I do everything from the shell: ripping cds/dvds, watching shows/movies, encoding mp3s... I'll even use mpg123 over amaroK if I'm too lazy to reach for the mouse.

Grudaire

Hmmmm for the idiot newbie who basically uses the terminal only after double checking the exact command he wants online: Is there any good tutorial to get into using the terminal?

evercloserunion

Cliste wrote: »

Hmmmm for the idiot newbie who basically uses the terminal only after double checking the exact command he wants online: Is there any good tutorial to get into using the terminal?

I found http://www.linuxcommand.org/ to be quite good. It doesn't cover absolutely everything but it is a good introduction.

E39MSport

ssh using putty 100%. Can't give last 10 commands.

sKeith

logdog gave the shell command for it. it gets you history, sorts by most used then gives top 10.

history | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10

Johnboy1951

Khannie wrote: »

A comment in the 10.04 thread had me thinking.....I've reached the point where I prefer to use a terminal for most things. I would say that 90% of my non-browsing time is spent in front of a terminal. I'll generally move files that way, encode videos, reboot, even going as far as resizing pictures by command line.

What about you? Do you prefer the graphical equivalent? Or is it terminal all the way?

Well obviously I am the odd one out in this thread!

I use GUI about 95% of the time.

I want to move a bunch of files? ....... gotta have a look to see where to drop them!

I use the CLi mostly for information purposes .....
df
top
fdisk
cat
ls
grep
and so on.

Apparently I don't need the speed of operation of the terminal ..... might have something to do with slowing down meself!

Of course a weak memory is not much use either

Not using nix in a work environment might also have a lot to do with it.

The time saved CLi/GUI means little to me, so the more modern tools are what I use for the most part.

Strangely I am also more comfortable in my modern car than in my old 'classic' ........... maybe it is an age thing

Have fun!

jmcc

About 95% of my Linux based work would be done from the command line. In some respects, the GUI is a conspiracy to keep people stupid by making sure that they never learn (A primary marketing strategy of Microsoft ).

Regards...jmcc

I have to say, I use mostly GUI. I'm just getting into using terminal more but for a lot of my tasks, using GUI is fine.
My rule of thumb is, if a terminal program takes up the full terminal screen, may as well just use a GUI version.

Programs that output text - they're the ones I tend to use in the terminal, as they let me pipe and redirect.

Capt'n Midnight

158 sudo
63 ls
54 ping
34 cd
16 ifconfig
15 df
11 man
10 ip
10 cp
9 rsync
9 dmesg
8 mount
8 ktorrent
7 rm
5 tftp
5 cat
4 rename
3 lsusb
3 gtkpod
3 bash


history | grep sudo | awk '{ print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20

29 dhclient
24 cfdisk
21 mount
12 rsync
9 sfdisk
8 mkfs
8 apt-get
7 gedit
4 mkdosfs
4 kismet
3 volname
3 reboot
3 gparted
3 ddrescue
2 rmdir
2 mkfs.vfat
2 cp
2 chown