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Issue #198, October 2010

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The Most Grepping Issue Of The Year!

Bad puns aside, the Command Line Issue is always a favorite. While Linux has evolved into an elegant operating system complete with GUI front ends and a stylish visual appeal, at its core, Linux is still text configs, symbolic links, and log files. Around these parts, we consider that a feature, so this month we've dedicated our issue focus to the command line.

Reuven Lerner starts us off it the world of text as he continues his series on non-relational databases. This month it's Cassandra, which appears to have amazing scaling abilities. I suspect Dave Taylor's column this month is really a subtle joke about coders spending too much time in their parent's basement. He shows us how to use a script to determine if the sun is up or not. Granted, we could peek outside -- but why do all that needless work when our computer could do it for us!

Daniel Bartholomew reviews the Ben NanoNote for us this month. This fascinating little sub-$100 device is a real computer inside a case the size of a large cellphone. What might a computer that small be good for? Check out Daniel's article to find out. While you're doing that, check out Jes Fraser's roundup of CLI based applications. She covers everything from multimedia, to editors, to web browsing, and even instant messaging. Perhaps an SSH session and the Ben NanoNote will be all you need for a computer! (Assuming you don't stray more than fifteen feet from a bigger computer… Be sure to read Daniel's article.)

When you stick to the command line, there are a surprising number of solutions that will keep all that GUI stuff out of your hair. Whether you want to bookmark directories in bash (Ira Chayut shows us how), or you want to kick it old school with a text based spreadsheet (Serge Hallyn has us covered there), the command line can make a superhero out of anyone. If you don't believe me, take a look at our resident command line superhero on page 18. Kyle Rankin knows root is the true master of the Linux universe, and he sports his powers proudly. In fact, if you've ever hung around with Kyle, you know that although he has a fancy high-powered laptop, his aversion to all things GUI makes it unnecessary. He uses it to SSH into an 800Mhz server, and does pretty much all his work from there. This month he shows us part of his elaborate email setup with Mutt. If you've ever doubted the power of Mutt, you won't after this month.

I'm sure many of you love the command line for those things best done on the command line, but prefer a more point-and-clicky interface for other stuff. We can respect that. In fact, while I do much of my sysadmin work on the command line, things like email and spreadsheets just make more sense when they're GUI, at least for me. Ibrahim Haddad gives us an intro to MeeGo, which is a combination of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin. It's a GUI based operating system for small screens. Of course, there's more to it than that, so you'll want to check it out yourself. We also have an article by Adrian Klaver about a web-based front end for rdiff-backup and rdiffWeb as a backup and restore system. Finally, as one of those applications that can go either CLI or GUI, Greg Bledsoe shows us how we can use the normally graphical virtualization solution "VirtualBox" in a headless, command line way.

While choice is something we pride ourselves on in the Linux community, and those command line only folks can happily live with their GUI neighbors -- Kyle Rankin and Bill Childers don't always agree on things. This month you can feel free to take sides as they argue over "sane defaults" or "extensive configurability" in their Point-Counterpoint column. While they state their cases, in honor of the command line issue, I think I'll go play a text adventure. I hope I don't get eaten by a grue.