Dear Mansinghka Two things occurred to me, after seeing your query.
1. If you ask someone what is more popular, largely people proclaim their own view in the name of 'popular'. Maybe it is another way of trying to know _his/her_ view without letting him/her know that it is getting known. But, if one wants to be true to the action of replying, how one can say what is more popular, it is always going to be a very biased sampling. Everyone finally talks about a very small portion of the population, in most cases the size being simply unity. 2. This question, if asked this way -- what you use more: command prompt or gui, and do you feel more comfortable after some reasonable amount of time to change over to command prompt? -- the question now gets answerable but a bit muddled. Let me try to reply that, this transformed question. And the reply to this question becomes meaningful only when you add another parameter with this question, how long one is a GNU-Linux user. Because what amount of time is 'reasonable time' or by your phrase 'a certain time period', will vary according to the time one is using GNU-Linux, in my opinion. And when you are asking gui/command-prompt, there is another problem too. How you are going to posit some terminal/console opened from within a gui? As a gui-command-prompt? Or, how you are going to posit 'gpm' or some other 'curses' things? Command-prompt-gui? So, i think, the question gets more easy to reply if you ask, how do you like to execute your command, by typing it in, or clicking your mouse? Now let me try to reply the question: I am using GNU-Linux for around four years now. For me, from the very start, working something with a keyboarded command seemed more interesting to me, because when you are trying to remember which menu-submenu-submenu ... you have to click to do some job, you have to remember much more than a command. And two, whenever i forget something, i can directly cross-check it with the manual, so many excellent manuals, in so many forms being always already there in the documentation, 'man', 'info' or distro's own pdf and html files. But I do prefer a gui-command prompt. Firstly, clicking another terminal/console open is more simple in a gui than changing to some other virtual terminal with 'Ctrl'-'Alt'-'Fn'. And again, the number of virtual terminals is limited to six. While, in gui, you can open as many consoles as you want. And, being a very non-technical kind of user, unlike many of our learned programmer-developer friends in this list, my prime interest being different kinds of text files, one major problem is there for me in case of pure command-prompt, that is 'pdf'-files. All the pdf-viewers that i know, work in gui. And the video display is much better in gui. But, then, in gui, i like to execute a program by typing in the command in a console, because, typing in the command allows me to manipulate options in a much easier way. So, the kind of environment i prefer is gui-comman-prompt, in place of command prompt. But in majority of the cases i prefer to execute the command by typing it in, not clicking. Clcking makes you so dependent on the existing scheme, the scheme that was framed by the one that constructed the gui frontend. I dont know what was the exact purpose of your mail. If it is something related to teaching very young ones (what i presumed to be the thing in your mind), then, i can suggest you one thing. In glt-madhyamgram (a very loose very local very uneducated pack of individuals trying to help others with their very non-technical GNU-Linux knowledge), i have seen time and again, some young guy has to prefer clcking in place of typing, mainly due to his lack of touch-typing. For this i tried the GNU package 'gtypist'. Usually in most of the cases i install the system on their machines, and as the last step in installing i compile the 'gtypist' package on his/her system. This serves another purpose too: direct demonstration of what compilation means, how the codes get transormed into binaries. And in some cases, where i insisted on his/her learning touch-typing first as a step to learning the GNU-Linux system, the result is magical. Even with quite some experience and expertise in MSW environments, what is predominantly a clicking one, they very soon start to prefer to execute their commands by typing them in. dipankar das On Thursday 18 November 2004 00:44, Ashwin Mansinghka wrote: > Dear All, > > Just wanted to know what is more popular among the users of Linux - > > A. command prompt or a GUI interface for configuring, tweaking, > troubleshooting etc. > > B. Is it true that new users after a certain time period, feel more > comfortable to change over to the command prompt ? > > with Regards, > ASHWIN > > > -- > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body > "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. > FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3 -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
