I get weird looks from friends when ever I boot up Arch Linux on my eee pc. The same can be said when I load up Emacs/VI to type something. After all, it’s a console application for text-editing. In the world of Windows/OSX, where word processors like Microsoft office rules, it’s akin to saying that you’re a vegetarian for ethical reasons.
I can clearly remember the first time I installed GNU/Linux on my machine. Back then, I thought that Linux was an OS reserved only for the geeks or programmers. I wasn’t too far from the truth. The path to GNU/Linux is tough and required a certain know-how, using strictly text-based application is worse. There are no cute icons to ease your soul. The only thing graphical is the blinking cursor. Some would call such endeavour masochistic. Why did I ditch the GUI? Doing more with less.
In an effort to focus on writing and nothing else, I started on a search for a text-editor that allows me to turn off all the useless tool bars, menus. I found Q10, a full-screen text-editor for Windows. It was a joy to use.
After dropping my last 500 bucks on a Asus eee pc 900, I proceed to find the Linux version of Q10 for my box only to find out–Q10 has no Linux version. That’s when I decided to find an alternative to Q10. After a search on google, I found Emacs and VI. Both text-based applications where the use of the mouse is considered sacrilegious. An affront to all things GNU.
At first, I bemoan the dead of my mouse in Emacs. After learning the key-strokes in Emacs, I found that I can do things in Emacs with relative ease and came to love the idea that my hands don’t have to leave the keyboard at all. It greatly increase my productivity, not to mention that I’m more focused on the screen than ever, since I don’t have to deal with a certain irritating paperclip asking if I needed any help every 5 minutes.
Today, I can surf the web, read my mail, write, instant message all from the console without the use of a GUI. Is it easier? For certain it’s a big NO. So why use command line applications at all? It’s all for simplicity’s sake. Do you remember the days of WordStar? Nothing but just a word processor, it’s effectively just a box with nothing but WordStar loaded. Just for word processing, a far cry from the word processors of today. Those days are far gone, but in the search for more processing power, we keep updating our software like we need the latest glitzy features, when all we need is a blinking cursor and a keyboard.
That’s good enough a reason for me to ditch the GUI and return to the world of console applications–where simplicity rules.
2 Comments
I understand where you’re coming from and I have a lot of sympathy with you but I think it’s important to note that simplicity is not the only, nor always the highest value. And as you feely admit simplicity comes at a cost.
Now lest you misundertand, I do like console text-only apps, a lot. See my ode to (g)vim here – http://shuggie.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/gvim-and-vigour/
But it’s a question of what’s right for a particular application. So I use gvim for writing and tin for usenet because those are essentially text-base tasks. I use Firefox for web browsing because like it or not, the web is a very visual medium. It has pictures, even videos. And whilst I may find a lot of web pages have far too much eye-candy that’s not really adding anything, that’s not always the case. And there are some youtube videos that are amusing, interesting or useful to me.
I think what I really hate, is not GUIs per se, and definitely not console apps – I’m happy with either – what I really don’t like doing is having to reach for the mouse when I’m doing something that’s overwise keyboard intensive (like writing), or having to use the keyboard for something that’s quicker with a mouse (like hitting tab 17-hundred times in elinks where a simple mouse move and click would do it in a GUI-browser)
Ultimately of course, to each his or her own and never under-estimate the value in using something you prefer however clunky someone else finds it.
Cheers
Shuggie
you’re saying what i’ve been thinking about for years. back to the basics, back to what really matters.