Tuesday 23 January 2007

Commands and GUI (Graphical User Interface)

Hi,

This is my first blog, after my friend, Sam, convinced me to write up a blog. As many of us know that Linux is a command based interface. Where you have to remember those complex commands. But its not always that you should remember those commands. If you are stuck up with a commands syntax you can use a man command. They can be referred as manual pages for the command.

For eg. To know the syntax of command rpm you have to type on command prompt

man rpm

and press enter key. This will bring you a complete syntax, various parameters, arguments and combinations of those parameters and arguments to be passed to the command.( You can try it out on a Linux machine)

Now second example like Windows user may be knowing, to list the contents of drive we type command dir, this will list all the contents of a particular drive. Now you don't what command is to be used in Linux. Then just type the following command

apropos directory

This will list all the commands which are associated with directories. If you are not sure which command is to be used you can use man to know the details. See its so easy!!!!!
You don't have to remember the commands. These will make you understand that Linux is not so hard even at command level.

Coming to GUI (Graphical User Interface), not all Linux are dedicatedly on command based. Even Linux have a GUI. For example GNOME and KDE are most developed GUI for Linux. Other GUI's like IceWM, Fluxbox or Afterstep, Xfce4 etc. which are LightWeight GUI's are also available. Isn't it great to know that you have multiple choices for a GUI.

In Microsoft world you are left with no other option but Windows. On contrary for Linux you have multiple GUI's.

But why is there different GUI? This choice of GUI has been made possible by the nature of open source (Linux). This allows anyone to develop a GUI to answer specific needs. Thus, all these GUI have a reason to exist: to fit the needs and goal of those developing them. That also means that there isn't a "best" or "worst" GUI. There's only GUI that are, or aren't, adapted to your needs. The idea is then to find the one that's right for you...



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