Welcome to the 'I Hate GUIs' club

[Cyborg Girl]

I think GNU Screen is quite possibly the best thing ever to happen to my netbook. It's amazing what computers can do, when they're not burdened down with hundreds of megabytes worth of windows, widgets, and glitz.

(For the uninitiated: screen is like a window manager, or a desktop shell, but for text interfaces. It lets you divide a text console up into different areas, each running its own task. It also looks exactly like the nifty fake interfaces from 90s Hollywood films.)

Now if only I could look at PDFs on the command line. Or deal with Office documents... Or pay my bills. Then I'd never leave the console. Sigh.

[Cyborg Girl]

Oh good! I've found a bunch of neat tools for doing GUI things on the CLI.
- fbi, an image viewer
- fbgs, a PDF/postscript viewer
- links, the browser, has a graphics mode for framebuffer interfaces

Between those and the various CLI tools for extracting text from documents, this EeePC might have a new lease on life. All I'm missing is
- A movie player
- A browser that can handle enough Javascript to make my bank happy

Even with those holes, though, this has been well worth the effort.

[Morrolan]

eeePC? which one?

i have one lying around running W7 that i'm considering setting up as a Chromebook, just because it is possible and see how that works.

have you looked at that?

[Cyborg Girl]

My one and only EeePC - a 1005HAB model. It is 32-bit only, and has 1 GB of RAM (and a maximum capacity of 2 GB). Many would say it is obsolete.

Re ChromeOS, IMO it's the moped of operating systems: a good idea in principle, but not suitable for everyone. I'm one of the people it's not suitable for.

(Whereas most Linux distros are more like a DUKW... Weird, unsightly, and on some occasions indispensible.)

[Sigma_Orionis]

screen is pretty cool when you're doing working the CLI over an unreliable connection.

Oh yeah. Welcome to the club.

[Morrolan]

My one and only EeePC - a 1005HAB model. It is 32-bit only, and has 1 GB of RAM (and a maximum capacity of 2 GB). Many would say it is obsolete.

Re ChromeOS, IMO it's the moped of operating systems: a good idea in principle, but not suitable for everyone. I'm one of the people it's not suitable for.

i think i have the same one. weirdly named Seashell, black, Atom CPU?

ours is upgraded to the 2 gb memory. it used to run XP, but i upgraded it to W7 just for the hell of it and it runs that very well.

i'm just interested in having look at Chrome's OS, for the same reason i changed my Asus Zenbook to W8 (which i regret).

[Cyborg Girl]

Yes, that's the one. They're surprisingly reliable; I've had mine since 2009 (though I did have to replace the fan last year). In my case it came with Windows 7 Starter, not XP.

My problem with ChromeOS is that it's mostly "cloud oriented," or whatever marketing term they use now. Its only local desktop applications are the browser, movie player, file manager, and terminal; and it has no compiler or package manager, so you can't install stuff locally (not easily anyway). Also it requires a GMail account to log in locally.

It's simple, secure, and very very limited. Probably a great idea for people who don't do much with their computers, are confused by complicated GUIs, and manage to get their Windows machines infected all the time. That's not a bad thing, it's just not adequate for getting certain kinds of work done.

(Granted you can also do office work on it, via Google Docs. And maybe even scripting, since there are cloud based IDEs now... But as soon as the internet connection goes out, everything vanishes in a puff of smoke. For me that is an absolute dealbreaker.)

[Morrolan]

?.. But as soon as the internet connection goes out, everything vanishes in a puff of smoke. For me that is an absolute dealbreaker.)

that's what I heard as well. allegedly, though, that problem has lessened with the latest versions, which ( anecdotally) is why Microsoft is now getting concerned and has started ridiculing Chrome OS in ads.

[FZR1KG]

Go for the cloud. The cloud is good. The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

Just think how good the security of the nation will be when the NSA/CIA/FBI and whoever else gets access to the servers once everyone is forced to join the "cloud" clan.
You data is belong to us.

The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

[Cyborg Girl]

that's what I heard as well. allegedly, though, that problem has lessened with the latest versions, which ( anecdotally) is why Microsoft is now getting concerned and has started ridiculing Chrome OS in ads.

Right, it can use web apps from the browser cache IIRC. I'll admit that idea has some appeal in terms of convenience, if you use a lot of cloud apps; but it doesn't solve the issue where the provider of a cloud service has total control over your data.

As for Microsoft, IMO they've lost the plot.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Go for the cloud. The cloud is good. The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

Just think how good the security of the nation will be when the NSA/CIA/FBI and whoever else gets access to the servers once everyone is forced to join the "cloud" clan.
You data is belong to us.

The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

I was bitching the cloud two years ago, YER LATE

[FZR1KG]

Go for the cloud. The cloud is good. The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

Just think how good the security of the nation will be when the NSA/CIA/FBI and whoever else gets access to the servers once everyone is forced to join the "cloud" clan.
You data is belong to us.

The cloud is mother. The cloud is father.

I was bitching the cloud two years ago, YER LATE

Only two years?
You have much to learn young grasshopper.

[Sigma_Orionis]