On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 9:34 AM, Rick Moen via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
The best very advice to novices, IMO, is to get to know standard Unix console tools, because they'll be consistently useful across diverse systems and across decades, while the other stuff is here today, something wildly different tomorrow.
A clear "yes and no";-) In my case my "rpm and FreeBSD infested brain" was on holidays and was about to update the only "apt-get driven" system I have around at the moment. So, what is the command line tool I have to learn? A lot of command line tools, and technologies, vary over time, and not only between distributions and Unix flavours. I am still used to ifconfig but a minimal install under Red Hat does not even has it. It was easier because it was available everywhere, I still have to lookup some details, occasionally, because my brain does not keep all details in mind (Which system needs a "gw" in the route add command? Which netstat options do I have under Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris? What systemd commands do I have to learn now?..) Fortunately there are manpages (oops, the Red Hat minimal install does not..) On top of it, I know how many users baulk if you give them a terminal. Just instruct a stereotypical office worker over the phone to open the command line under Windows. Okay, how? "Go to search, type "cmd" and press enter." "I have a black box with "C:\blabla written in it. What does it do?" And then you have to dictate every space and dot when you ask for "ping 1.2.3.4" and if you are lucky the user types "ping1dot2dot3dot4" and gets a "Command not found" (Do not laugh, I do not make it up..) So, you already scare 50+% of the population away with your advice. Anyway, a few Unix GUI tools I used ages ago showed "how to do it right", I think. There was Nextstep. It was possible to do a lot of things on the GUI to run a Nextstep network. I also used the command line, but I had to deal with a heterogeneous network, with Solaris and NIS+ etc. Definitely more than "Novice use". I used niload and nidump etc. and it all felt very natural because it has a behaviour very close to the treatment of /etc files, so it was not a re-invention of the wheel. Nextstep gave me an idea how to integrate the admin tools in the GUI under Unix. I have not touched MacOS X for a while but the spirit seems to live there. My kids never use the command line, I believe. I also loved AIX's smitty. It is actually a tool to learn administration, if you like. It is menu-driven but it explains what it will do if you execute it. I have to admit that I am not the one to complain about GUI admin tools that much (I do not use them, in general, and I am not the one who will write them) but I still think they could be better. Regards Peter