[NBLUG/talk] Unix/Linux class

[Walter Hansen]

S. Saunders wrote:
> On Sun, December 3, 2006 16:11, Eric T. Landerville wrote:
> 
>> Mark is also a firm believer in the back
>> end of linux, the command line and editing text files directly.  His
>> saying is that if you know the back side the pretty GUI will come easy.
>> I liked this but some others don't.  If you want to get your hands dirty
>> and prefer booting into run level 3 take the class.  If you like doing
>> things via the GUI you will probably be happier with a book on a
>> specific Linux distro.
> 
> Speaking as someone who did SysAdmin for 20some years, I can't regard a
> GUI-only "*NIX Admin" as anything but a "Jr. Technician."   VERY junior,
> at that...
> 
> It's increasingly true that things that used to be CLI-only now have GUI
> options, but it's also true that many of *NIX's strengths can only be had
> as CLI (or CLI-oriented, e.g. scripts) features, and many more "GUI
> options" are  slower than CLI or lack some degree of
> functionality/features that can be had from the CLI.
> 
> There are, I believe, some GUI-only SysAdmin-ish chores these days, too...
> but I think we can presume that "GUI Aware" is a given.  It's "CLI Aware"
> that really marks the robust foundations needed for "Power User" status
> (whether SysAdmin or other).


My opinion varries quite a bit. I hardly ever use a traditional *nix gui 
and really need to do so. Instead I generally interact with linux 
servers in via ssh, but I've also found the WebMin gui to be a great 
help for some configurations that are a pain to remember. The one that 
comes to mind is sendmail. I can never seem to remeber what the hell all 
the files do and which format to use there. But for apache I generally 
prefer doing things on the command line. Hmm. Webmin is also great for 
editing and creating users. I could do this from the command line, but 
it's something I don't do a lot of and it's easier to do it there than 
go read a couple man pages.