4d ago

The Terminal

108 comments

Just roll up and open hackertyper.net in fullscreen. “This is going to be a bigger problem than I thought…”
- Then after five minutes of furious typing you say ....
  I'M IN
- Thanks for this...

Back in the early 2010s I was sitting on a long train ride, and opened my hacker-sticker-covered netbook and started doing some terminal stuff in a console window; nothing particularly remarkable or exciting-looking, just navigating directories and moving some files around. An older lady sitting next to me glanced over, her eyes got wide, and she got up and moved to a seat further away from me.
I still think about that moment a lot.
- There was a guy who got approached by a flight attendant for doing calculus on a plane. Some other passenger had reported him for doing something in Arabic, which we all know could hijack and take down the plane!
  
  To be fair, he was almost certainly using Arabic numerals.
  /s, obvs
- I set my terminal to black text on white when I'm in public.
  I don't want to have to explain what I'm doing to an impatient functionally illiterate backwater cop.
- The real question is why were you moving files with the terminal emulator?
  
  Because that's a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to do?
  
  Yeah I'm a terminal noob, but feels like a file manager would be way easier to move files.
  
  The minuscule touchpad sucked on that netbook, making it far quicker and easier to type than smush my finger around while clicking awkwardly-placed buttons.
- I used to write html, JS, and CSS on long flights and saw some side eye looks, but then I’d have to test load the website I was working on for mom jeans and the jig was up.

I feel like using the command line should really be a basic skill taught in school. That would be way more worthwhile than teaching people how to use like microsoft office
- Most teachers are already glad when their students graduate with functional literacy and without bullet holes.
  
  Tell me you’re from the USA without telling me you’re from the USA.
- Okay, but, like... No? How delusional do you have to be to think something you never have to touch in Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android (and probably less and less going forward in desktop Linux, an already extremely niche OS) is more important than learning how to use a word processor, make presentations, or work with spreadsheets? (Microsoft Office specifically is used because it's the industry standard as part of a vicious cycle, but not the school's fault or problem). Do you, like, exist in the real world outside a very specific industry/set of interests?
  
  As a computer science student, I haven't met anyone that didn't use terminal on Mac. I am heavily biased.
  Also, I think ping is actually very useful for a normal user. Not nearly as useful as (any) office software, but still.
  
  Scammers use the terminal to trick people into thinking they've been hacked, so that's one reason to at least know it's not magic.
  
  Anyone can learn to use an office suite on their own in very little time so there's no reason to teach it. Being able to use the command line is a valuable skill that makes you a way better computer user no matter what you're doing and it's one that a lot of people are missing these days. I don't think you can really say you know how to use a computer if you can only use it in the very specific ways someone happens to have made a gui for
  
  I don't think any tool must be taught in school because they're commonly used. So neither terminal or ms office need be per se. However, scripting, with bash/python/etc could be a good brain workout for the logic.
- Well, I'll settle for basic computer literacy as I still run into college students without a working knowledge of file systems... buuuut one would argue it's worth covering the basic building blocks of how all this works.
  I've heard similar arguments for teaching people the fundamentals of how data works too, as we have data harvested from us at alarming rates and knowledge is power.

The terminal feels like such a haven for me, for its responsiveness. Windows gets slower and slower with each update. Even my Linux DEs are slow now because I’m hardware poor. The terminal is the only app that stays ahead of my typing.
- Oof. That must be a single core laptop from 2010 or something, which if true, that sucks.
  I have a 13 year old computer around here that had no problems with LMDE6 when last I fired it up. It was relatively high spec when new which takes some of the edge off, but I never had an input lag problem anywhere except maybe badly-written websites.
  Just how limited is your computer?
  
  "How slow is it?" My desktop is so slow, it comes with a prompt that says 'Execute now to guarantee completion before Christmas.'
  
  Yeah. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro with a dual core i7 running Arch and Plasma, and while it's obviously nowhere near as quick as my M2 Macbook Air, it's still a perfectly respectable machine. Last week I also put Arch on a ThinkPad T410 with a dual core i5. I wouldn't want it as my main computer, but it chugs along ok.
  
  have you not used windows 11?
  file explorer now takes half a second to open a subfolder, more if within a OneDrive directory. I went back to Win10 because of that. it literally broke my workflow and prevented me from being able to do my job effectively
  I wasn't the only one at the company that saw this behavior either

It is genuinely shocking how computer illiterate marketing people tend to be.
- There’s a reason they have marketing jobs.
  
  They are good at social manipulation and compartmentalization.
  The programmers are similarly morally bankrupt, as they're implementing the enshitification of the worst people, the business people who make the shitty decisions both implement.
- Well, I dont want to lie for a salary, so im also bad at marketing.

sudo apt-get Gud.
- Apt-get is deprecated.
  May I suggest
  undefined
  
  git clone git@github.com:notro/gud.git
  
  apt-get isn't deprecated...
  If you run apt search x | grep y, you'll even get a warning against using apt in scripts
  apt-get isn't going away, apt is just a nicer frontend for interactive use
- hey we users just use apt now
  
  Sorry by the way I have not used Debian in many years, it has gone by the wayside, I now use a different unnamed Operating System by the way.

I had a friend who wasn't very technical who had some issue where he couldn't boot into his OS (Windows) and bought a new computer, but wanted the files off the old computer. So he asked me for help. I remember bringing a Knoppix live CD (remember Knoppix?) And when I was there, I realized I had a severe lack of general networking equipment. (I didn't have a switch, so I couldn't plug both computers into the network so they could communicate with each other and the internet.)
So I started up the old computer in Knoppix, plugged it into the network, and installed a bunch of networking packages like a DHCP server and such. And then I used the Ethernet cable to plug the two computers into each other, letting the Knoppix box give the new Windows machine its IP. And then I installed Putty on the Windows machine and used it to SCP the files from the old machine to the new one.
The whole thing went way smoother than I'd have expected, never having attempted that before. But I felt like such a hacker that day. Lol.
- I remember going through tech school 20 years ago and them telling you you need a crossover cable with you at all times for just this type of situation. I think in the 20 years I have used one once.
  
  NICS have had auto crossover detection built-in for like 20 years now too.
- Apple used to have a function in macs with FireWire, where if you had T pressed down on the keyboard while booting, the computer booted into a mode where you could use it as a FireWire external hard drive. An insanely useful feature, for migrating files off old machines, installing OS onto a machine without a functional optical drive, quickly stealing your friend's hard drive contents etc.
  It's a shame it didn't really take off as a more common feature. It would be a useful feature in so many situations, nowadays the closest I can get to it is a custom USB stick with a linux distro that tries to discover all volumes and expose them as network drives, but it's a lot more complicated to use than just having something you plug in and it simply works. I'd love it if they did a similar thing with thunderbolt, but as far as I know it's no longer an option.
  
  I think they still do that with Thunderbolt.

Joke aside...
Who has not reached that "just say yes so they shut up"-point with some people?

I've been trying to swap over to Linux and I don't like using the Terminal because I have zero memory retention for literally anything that isn't Weird Al songs
- Good thing about nodern terminal is that you don't need to remember much. It's all autocomplete this days, everything has help and there are helpers all over. As a fellow memory challenged, I love it
- for me its basically
  1 problem comes up
  2a search problem and find one liner terminal paste solution
  or
  2b search problem for like 17 pages and find a 3 separate menu 47 click and 2 regedit solution
  
  With Windows (pre-10+) at least I can generally avoid the frustration of fruitless internet searches by just mucking around in the control panel for a bit. Or even, yes, Regedit. I like to find a menu that offers me relevant options and then click a button to do a thing. Maybe it takes more time than just typing a command shortcut to do the thing, but clicking menu buttons is something I can just kind of figure out myself by exploring rather than reading the manual or consulting the eldritch lore of the internet every time I want to learn how to do a new thing. .
- Terminal commands and Weird Al lyrics might have more in common than you think.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw
- I've been on Mint for like 2 years and I haven't opened the terminal yet.
  
  I'm trying Mint too, for the most part it has been a relatively intuitive transition from Windows... up until the moment I try to customize things. Fuck me for trying to pin programs to my panel, make my own shortcuts/launchers, install things to my choice of directories or recategorize my start menu shortcuts. I'm so used to just being able to right click on something and have the thing I wanted to do be an option there, or be able to just click and drag something somewhere and it just does the thing. Looking up the directions for how to do a really basic thing after the third or fourth time gets reeeeal old.
- SH - Bourne Shell,
  BASH - Bourne Again Shell
  Once you figure those two out Linux becomes ridiculously easy afterwards as those will be your standard shells to use which provide a set list of basic commands like cd, nano, cat, ls, rm and so on, then you want to figure out which package manager your distro uses like Apt, Dpkg, Yum, Pacman so you can install software from their respective repositories.
  Then you figure out which software is Cli (command line) based and which have actual user interfaces, Cli based software will likely introduce new commands to your shells.
  
  Ok but I already have about 700 hobbies and projects I could be working on or learning, I would just like to click the button that does the thing.
  
  It’s a shame they’re both terrible.
  It would be nice to have a more modern and clean shell script language.
- If you're not into using the terminal, I'm going to suggest looking into one of the immutable distros (Bazzite if you're heavily into gaming, Aurora/Bluefin if you're more generic Windows/Mac respectively).
  All the important things that make the computer run, you can't (easily) change. All the stuff you care about, you can. As long as you reboot it from time to time, it'll always be up to date. It's meant for people who just want to use their computer and not tinker too much with it.

I find the terminal very quiet and cozy compared to desktop apps.
I have probably an unhealthy amount of nvim and tmux shortcuts.

The text isn't projecting onto her face. She can't be a hacker.

This happend to me just yesterday. I pulled up a terminal with python to use it as a basic calculator (don't judging, I was just adding numbers) and my class mate looks over and thinks I'm some kind of hacker for that

btop really impresses people... Too bad nobody has any interest looking at what I'm doing

I'm a designer, I don't know a single designer - from school or work - who doesn't know what the terminal is. Sure I don't really know how to use it but that's because I grew up on Win 7 and later, where GUIs ruled. Most designers are pretty tech literate, it's half the difference between us and fine arts folk.

3 terminal apps that got me hooked:
mednafen (emulating a PS1 on a net potato with 2gb of ram and an atom processor at a playable framerate was just magic to me)
moc (epically minimal music player that just feels right)
nano (I wrote a series of short stories using it while listening to music on moc, honestly the most zen-like experience I've ever had)
Bonus: radion (an online radio player mostly written in bash I discovered in the early days of Lemmy)

The best part of Hannah Montana Linux is that there is no terminal. You just stick your dick into the interface hole, or ofc you can jam the interface stick inside you, and it knows what you want done without you having to do anything.
- Yeah sure....

I am liking mainly because of the stereotype reversal ngl.

I see this almost every week

The thing about the terminal you don't need to know everything. Just a few basic commands get you moving and it kinda clicks. It is pretty optional with Linux most of the time. But I love using it is fast af for file management.

Someone replacing the ejecting coffee holder is pinnacle hacker spotting...

Last year, I was trying (and failing) to explain the basics of a file system to a designer that was designing a web app version of a fucking file system.

I - no kung fu.

if you run a policy update from the command line its like fairy dust on the real fix you just did. sometimes people straight up will not accept that a problem is solved until the little black box does the hacker magic

His eyes get progressively more whacked out.

The thing about engineers is that I expected it to be the bushy bearded guy. That's a stereotype, I know.

Designer should remove his neckbeard in shame.

108 comments