Command Line Woes
Posted by Mike on February 19, 2007
The project I’m currently working on is turning the old pentium III that I grabbed from my parents into a webserver using Ubuntu’s server distribution. I’m a big fan of using what’s shiny and new – as long as you forget about the 6 year old computer – so I’m using 6.10 Edgy Eft (they sure do have cute names). Perhaps the defining feature of ubuntu server (at least from my perspective) is that it has no GUI (graphical user interface for those not in the know) so absolutely everything I want to do has to be negotiated from the command line. I’ve had to go into the command prompt in Windows to do really simple things a few times before, and I fooled around with a few desktop distributions of Linux before I came up with this latest hare-brained scheme, so I have a little bit of experience communicating with a computer in text form. The last time I worked in an exclusively command line environment though, was DOS in the early 90’s on my Dad’s 386, and I only really knew enough to start up games.
The command line is an interesting beast, some people seem to swear by it while others argue that in most cases it is unnecessary (and that includes some certified computer geeks). I think I’m going to wind up coming down somewhere in the middle. I made early attempts at setting up my pIII as a web server using the GUI version of Ubuntu and Suse, but due to the system’s limitations I generally wound up smasing into a wall with the programs or somehow breaking the GUI. Since I switched over to the server, the only mistakes have been the result of my misunderstandings, which generally stem from tyring to use tutorials I find on the web to closely (I’ll explain that more in a later post). I think perhaps I’m starting to get a slightly better handle on how things work and have taken out what appears to be a very helpful book for a person in my situation from the library, those techie books sure aren’t cheap.
I doubt I’ll ever fully qualify as a true command line geek, but hopefully this experience will at least enable me to gain a slightly better understanding just what’s going on ‘under the hood.’
Marco Garcês said
I think you should master the Linux command line. Once you get that you never go back! I refute that someone can really administrate a Linux box/server using the GUI! Imagine making administration on some servers, and using the GUI… good guess, you had to have a killer internet connection! But with ssh and CLI, you simply do it with commands! It rocks!!
Want to learn command line? Go gentoo linux, you wont regret it!
Also, drop by my blog, I’m starting a serie of tutorials, from the basic to the more advanced.. =)
Mike said
Very good points Marcos, and I certainly will check out your blog (I’ll be linking to all the tutorials I can find relating my various projects). As far as Gentoo goes, I did give it a shot and wound up crashing up against connectivity problem after I got the initial install done. Even after consulting with a lot of very helpful people on IRC I was unable to get it up and going. I certainly don’t have a beef with Gentoo, it was probably something that I just didn’t get (there will be a similar to post to the one above about my networking woes soon), but I decided to go with the more straight forward ubuntu for the time being.
Thanks for being the first to comment!
Mike said
PS – if you don’t mind Marco (and sorry about mis-spelling your name above) how did you wind up coming across my site? I’d interested to hear.
Marco Garcês said
Err.. thats a good question? Don’t know if it was a Technorati search for “command line” or in Google.. to be honest i can’t recall =)
Gentoo is a tough one, but for sure, your problem can be solved… Once solved, you learn something new, believe me!
But, as someone once said… its not important which distro you use, as long it’s Linux! (I’m a hypocrite, I’m on a mac now, LOL)
Good luck with everything!
Dan K. said
Oh man, I remember Gentoo. After the initial orgy of compilation, I liked it a lot, but on a PIII it would take forever to trudge through the smallest update.
You’re not gonna install a GUI at all? That’s hardcore. Take a look at FluxBox. It’s a lightweight window manager that might come in handy when you just gotta go GUI for some administrative task.
Mike said
Yeah Gentoo was just to much for my purposes (maybe someday). I will look at FluxBox. Thanks again for the tip Dan.