I've gotta admit, that tmux thing is awesome

@gezley: I disagree. For the examples you give, you are right, but there are other examples, that lead to different conclusions.

Try to do spreadsheet work on the CLI, then. And try to pass on the results to someone else with a different operating system. Connect your spreadsheet on the CLI to a database. Etc. I could continue eternally. There *are* many tasks, for which a GUI is more productive, or that cannot be done on the CLI, at all.

Other examples. Writing a letter to multiple recipients, with addresses taken from a database or CSV file. Yes, you can do the latter with EMACS or Vim. But is it easier or faster than with LibreOffice?
Combine documents, or embed them into each other, on the CLI. How would connect a spreadsheet with a letter in LaTeX, if the data are supposed to be always updated from a data source, every time the document is opened?
Rip selected content from a CD to your harddisk. I don't know of a simpler way than to use Konqueror for this. Just open the CD with Konqueror, open the virtual folder according the desired encoding, select the files you want and drag and drop them to the target folder on your harddisk. It's much harder to describe it than to do it. If you remember and type all the commands correctly, you may be equally fast on the CLI, but faster? I doubt it.
Final example for tonight: Try to use a Web 2.0 app from the console...

And remember: You can exploit the power of the CLI within a WM or DE, but not vice versa. And the best console program I know of, is Konsole. If you need a tiled terminal window, and tabas aren't good enough, you might try something like Yakuake.

You see: While your example with ffmpeg demonstrates, that some tasks can be done best from the CLI, there are other tasks for which a GUI is necessary and a WM or DE makes you more productive.

gargamel

Mine have the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950...I purchased it around Feb. '09!

It is excellent. It adheres to the classic Unix philosophy: do one thing and do it well. And when you combine tmux with other console applications which adhere to the same philosophy you end up with a productive and surprisingly enjoyable environment. And for someone on the road a lot it is nice to detach your tmux session and SSH or VPN to it later from another computer, even where bandwidth is challenging.

If you're going to continually import CSV files then you can always setup a Vim script or something (or just a bash script if you want) to import CSV files as e-mail addressed. Mutt can use any editor, and to add addresses to the e-mail you just need to paste them in the right spot (after the To: line). It would be trivial to import CSV-separated e-mails.
I'm not a LaTeX expert but I believe you can just include files...
I have a bash alias to an abcde command. I just type `cdrip` and it pulls the CDDB information and asks me if it is correct (if not I can edit in Vim), and if so I accept and it rips using the pre-determined codec to the pre-determined location (OUTPUTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKNUM}-${TRACKFILE}' for mine).

I agree with your sentiment that there are some things that are better done in a GUI (web browsing is one, though that is a software limitation on the part of text browser developers and not so much a technology limitation; spreadsheets are better *for me* in a GUI though there are some CLI spreadsheet tools; anything to do with graphics/video creation/editing; etc.). However, most of these come down to personal choice -- it is easier for some people to spend their time interacting with a GUI, and faster for others to work with the CLI.

gezley, you seem to be forgetting that going to the CLI exclusively has quite a steep learning curve that may take up more time to learn than you end up saving (depending on what you do and who you are). Additionally, to use the CLI for such a wide range of activities necessitates that you remember the appropriate commands, whereas in a GUI you can generally find your way (and `apropos` certainly isn't perfect).

I don't know why this has to be a religious war; some people will obviously prefer a GUI, while others will prefer the CLI. One is not better than the other for all tasks and for all people.

On a side note, if you like tmux you should also look into dvtm. And of course I always have to mention My Love, GNU screen.

I used KDE for a long time. Seems like today's KDE is a different animal what with Akonadi server, internal caches gobbling up disk space. Original poster says his main task is programming. Mine is blogging. Xfce4 works well for me. Another choice not mentioned (?) so far is IceWM. Could be acceptable with Robbie's packages but takes too much tweaking. One poster mentioned GNOME. But it is not native to the Slack environment so not a good choice for a newbie. For what the original poster wants I vote Xfce4.

The GNUinator
<a href="http://kakoluri.com/turning-to-slackware/" target="top">My Slackware Page</a>

Xcfe is one of those things I really want to like, because the basic philosophy behind it appeals to me. But things like the default file manager always wind up pissing me off... don't make decisions for me.

Openbox is my favorite so far. Runs faster than fluxbox on my machine, I can customize literally EVERYTHING. Pipe menus are great. Its so nice to have the weather report in my deskmenu as opposed to having it on a conky script ugly-ing up the desktop. Everything Ive thrown at it so far has worked wonderfully, my games run faster, my apps launch almost instantly, and openbox loads up in about 1 second from launching the startx command. IMHO, full fledged desktop environments like KDE and GNOME are trying to do too much for the end user, while using the CLI exclusively in this day and age, one where so many desktop activities are designed to be graphical (web browsing, playing/editing video, graphic design, and gaming, just to name a few) , is an excercise in futility. It may be nice to hop on the CLI every once in a while, but I dont really understand why one would choose to operate exclusively from the CLI instead of just using a terminal emulator in a Window Manager.

I've been using i3 for a while now and I really like it. It's easily customizable and a great work environment (no distractions/gaudy desktop apps/icons, etc...) and the best part is that it's keyboard driven
I find it easier/faster to just keep my hands on the keyboard instead of perpetually moving my right hand to and from the mouse all the time.

I've tried a couple of tiling WMms in the past: Xmonad and Awesome if I remember correctly and didn't get on with either of them. I'm trying i3 at the moment. It's early days yet, but I think I could be quite happy with this one. I'm a little concerned that some of its default key mappings (mostly alt key) will clash with some program's hot keys, so I might have to modify the keymap to use something like the Super_L/R key instead (Seems logical to make the "Windows key" map to WindowManager functions. My old favorite WindowMaker had the same issue with that though so it's nothing unexpected or unusual.

Think I'll spend a little more time with this one and see how I get on.

I use Vim on a daily basis, for many things including writing simple letters. But CSV files aren't the same as a fresh data feed from a database.
I am a big fan of Mutt, I have used it for many, many years. But now I prefer KMail. I can do everything what I used to do with Mutt with it, but faster. It's possible to attach files to an email with Mutt, but it's easier to double-check if it was the right file before sending out a message in GUI MUA. Also, it's easier to handle multiple identities and mail accounts with KMail than with Mutt. But I agree, that Mutt is a great program!


Yes, but only some graphics formats will result in useful output. It is, of course, possible to include CSV files, but you will have to reformat them for LaTeX. This is no fun, if you have to do it manually. Also, it's always possible to write a script or program that generates a LaTeX table from a data input file. But this takes a lot of knowledge and patience for debugging, and the time and effort are only justified, if it is a recurring task, and the format of the input data remains the same over many iterations.

I, too, use abcde for ripping all the content off a CD. It's a really helpful script. But having to create a config file for abcde would scare me! If I only want to rip a few tracks, but not all of them, I can do this with a few mouse clicks in Konqueror or K3b.

If you know a spreadsheet program for CLI that is user-friendly (to a degree, at least) and can output to portable formats, I'd be interested. SC is a good program, but fails in the second respect. Do you know good alternatives?

Generally, I would think that a GUI is better for human-machine interaction, and the CLI is better for human-machine control and automation.

That's why spreadsheets work better in GUI, because the ease of data and formulae entry is key. But for task automation, a Bash script in Linux can beat a highly sophisticated workflow engine by all measures, at times. 8-)

Is it a religious war? Up to know, it's a passionate but interesting debate. Otherwise I agree with you.

This was for gezley, but if you don't mind, a will have look on these, too, in the future... ;-)

gargamel

I was a happy KDE user until a few days ago. I'm now really impressed with Openbox. If I feel the need to spend some time on the CLI, I usually just full screen a terminal and use GNU Screen. That way, I can atleast alt-tab into firefox or something if I need it.

On my Acer aspire One netbook I haven't found anything better than Debian 6. It's very stable and easily installs any of the the four major desktops.

The Gnome desktop works very good, as does Xfce. They just aren't my cup of tea. KDE is...well, it's KDE and has a few quirks. If you like the KDE specific apps like I do then putting up with it might be something you'd be willing to do. I was able to find a tutorial on speeding it up and it worked well for me. Before just moving my desktop back to KDE I had been using LXDE along with LXDE and Xfce apps. The tutorial (more like a how he did it) is at http://on-disk.com/cms/index.php?wik...-Speed-Up-KDE4

To me the LXDE approach feels more like windows 98 or 2000 and is quite functional.

i3 for me too, but I like KDE when I'm not tiling.