"H. S. Teoh" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:50:24AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: > [...] >> I literally grew up on command-lines[1]. But despite that, I still >> much prefer GUIs for anything a GUI reasonably works for: Like file >> browsers, DB admin, manual DB queries, debuggers, Tortoise*, etc. >> (although for web server configuration I've come to vastly prefer >> config files - MUCH easier to remotely manage, plus the settings for >> files/paths are necessarily tied to the file/path *name*, not the >> physical file, so you don't kave to keep messing with them every time >> something's moved/renamed/deleted/recreated) > > OK, this isn't exactly GUI, but have you tried mc? >
Umm, I don't *think* so, unless you count mcedit. For a breif while I used mcedit as my preferred remote-file text editor, since it was text-mode (so it worked through ssh) and was slightly better than nano/pico. But I haven't had much need for it ever since I realized I could do this: $sshfs user@domain:/ mount-point $kate mount-point/remote-path & I'll take a look though. > I remember in the good ole DOS days, Norton Commander (of which mc is a > clone) was one of the best things around. It made DOS usable. In fact, > even pleasant. > Hmm, if that's like Total Commander on Windows, then I don't think I would like it. I do *love* Total Commander's multi-file renaming, but that feature is really the only reason I keep it around. Heh, as bad as this might sound, I think what I basically want is more or less Windows Explorer on linux ;) (Including the customizations I've installed, like "DOS Prompt Here" and Tortoise*) And yea, Explorer works under wine, but it's kinda like running a GTK app in Windows - but worse since Windows GTK apps at least *know* what OS they're really running on. > >> Although that said, even the Windows file manager has been plummeting >> downhill ever since Vista. I don't know wtf MS has been thinking. > > I hate the windows file manager with a passion. It's so difficult to > make it display things properly, there's no way (not easily anyway) to > specify a glob filter in a huge directory, change sorting criteria with > a keystoke, etc.. I find `ls | grep` much more palatable than that > painful 1-pixel wide horizontal scrollbar that leaps several pages per > pixel when you're trying to find something in a truly huge directory, I > mean folder. > Yea. While Windows Explorer is my favorite file manager, even I'll readily admit it's not perfect: - It keeps locking files/dirs for no apperent reason and keeps them locked. - Sometimes it has a hard time in dirs with lots of files, especially in thumbnail mode. - Search is slow. - It doesn't have a built-in "Extension" column, just that useless "Type" column. There's a third-party extension to add an "ext" column, but it's confused by zip files and it conflicts with the columns added by Tortoise*, so in many folders, instead of my "ext" column, it often gives me this useless "Product Version" column instead. But implementation issues aside (which I've more or less gotten used to), I like the basic UI itself a lot. In XP anyway. They really fucked up its UI in Vista and 7. > >> Keyboard/mouse switching comes pretty naturally to me. Part of it's >> probably years of practice, and the other part is that I use >> trackballs which tend to mostly stay put. > > I used to do a lot of keyboard/mouse switching too. Until I switched to > ratpoison, a window manager that doesn't require the mouse. Since then > I've found that my speed almost doubled. > > Keyboard/mouse switching is much better when it's a laptop with that > "nipple" thing in the middle of the keyboard. In fact, that's the only > case of mouse-switching that is comparable in speed to a keyboard-only > interface. Unless, of course, you're trying to manipulate graphical > stuff like draw freehand curves, in which case you'll want to be on the > mouse 99% of the time anyway. For discrete tasks like typing or > navigating menus, keyboard shortcuts are unbeatable. > I like to call it the clit mouse. It beats the shit out of trackpads (I hate those things with a passion), but I still find them a pain compared to mice and my trusty Logitech trackball. So I'm the opposite of you there: I actually find it much *easier* to switch between keyboard and trackball than keyboard and "clit mouse" despite the increased distance. Maybe I'm just weird. > >> [1] First AppleSoft BASIC and occasionally the built-in memory-editor >> and AppleSoft Logo. Later, MS-DOS 6-ish and occasionally gwbasic >> (normally used QBASIC instead, though) > [...] > > Ooooh! Another Apple II veteran! Ah, the good ole Apple II. Believe it > or not, my dad actually still has a couple o' 30-year-old Apple II's > that he actually *still uses*. He wrote a little personal accounting app > in Dbase, and has been using it for the last 3 decades. Never felt the > need to upgrade. Of course, now he also has a modern-day laptop and > modern PCs in the office. But that old faithful Apple II is still > chugging away... > Wow. Nice. I have an Apple IIc in a pile on the floor here to my right. Haven't had time to play with it in forever though. It's the same model I grep up on (IIc), but not the same physical machine. *God* I wish I hadn't sold my floppies along with my original system. I really wish I still had all that old data of mine. Probably all gone forever now: Overwritten, decayed, or in a landfill. :( I'm actually a huge Apple hater ever since I got fed up with my 10.2 eMac and the whole "Return of Jobs" world and product lines in general. But I *always* consider Woz's Apple II line to be the big, giant, glaring exception in Apple's portfolio.
