Hacker News Reader

Comment by dekerta | Hacker News Reader

No kidding. I laughed at this part: "STOP DOUBLE CLICKING ON A FILE " "Instead type '$ xdg-open file'"

Yeah, because that's way faster and more convenient than double clicking on an icon.

This one is great too: Don't open the file explorer! Instead you should type "find . -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'"

Seriously?

View on HN

The "find . -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'" is a bad joke. Heck, it's better to just tell them to `brew install mc` and use `mc` afterwards (or `exa` or whatever else). I usually just type `open .` and do the rest in Finder, although this admittedly breaks the command line workflow.

No matter how fast you can type, typing this clusterf*ck of a command isn't faster than using a better utility (command line or GUI). And I assume complete beginners (which the page seems to be for) don't know how to set up shell aliases just yet.

it's there, `brew install tree`, he should have simply left it at that, but the urge to brag prevailed

It often times is faster, or roughly the same speed. What's your point?

Say I want to edit .psqlrc

Doing it in GUI is like 10x slower. First dot files are usually hidden by GUI, so I have to search through menus on how to enable their display. Then I have to look for the damn file. Where it is among 200 similar dotfiles? 5s later I find it. Now right click, pick an corect editor from a submenu of a context menu. Edit. Save. Now go back to file browser and disable dotfiles display, otherwise all my regular files get drowned in noise, slowing the normal usage. It's retarded.

Alternative. Open terminal. Type vim .psqlrc. Edit save. Close terminal. 3s top for the non-editing parts of the workflow.

> Instead you should type "find . -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'"

They do say you can just write `tree` on Linux. If you don't have that command, you can just alias `tree` to the find command.

Yeah, because that's way faster and more convenient than double clicking on an icon.

It is if you happen to have both hands on the keyboard.

That said, I usually navigate a GUI file explorer using the keyboard too, so pressing Enter to open a file is even faster.

(This comment was submitted entirely using the keyboard.)

Even if you move your hands (gasp) off the keyboard to the trackpad or the mouse that is presumably very close by, typing that command is probably not faster and more convenient than double-clicking.

Yes. I am a huge CLI nerd, yet, I cannot be dishonest with myself - GUI is faster in a lot of things.

When copying files from one directory to the other - CLI vs GUI is debatable in terms of speed (I'd still say GUI is faster, but let's assume its debatable). But what if I want 1, 2, 5, 7 and 10th file; not all files? It is remarkably faster in GUI: Ctrl + click files I need and drag+drop. Done. Good luck fumbling around with CLI.

CLI nerds are the most annoying people I've encountered. They're myopically obsessed with their tmux + cli workspace and are not open minded.

I like cli for navigating directories, and finding and moving files. Using a graphical file manager feels clunky to me. I do use a gui for other things, like I finally switched from vim to vscode, but file management has always felt more natural in the cli.

The real problem is navigating to the file... I can tab complete or otherwise hop my way around my hard drive much faster than I can visually find a target to click on (and frankly I am shocked that isn't true of everyone who knows how to use a terminal--obviously I appreciate the "easy for beginners" aspect--I feel like the GUI could only possibly be faster for a contrived use case that would never come up in reality... oh, I have one: if the files you are organizing are all images and they have useful previews! I totally use the GUI file manager to organize photo albums... but of course I am barely using the mouse as I do so ;P).

GUI does not imply mouse-only interaction. Any good file manager will let you browse using the keyboard, with typeahead for file selection and accelerators for the context menu.

I can type over 120WPM --- that's less than 100ms per key.

I would've been able to type open and tab-complete the filename in the time it takes to move my hand over to the mouse, move the mouse to the right file, and double-click. The mouse is close, but not as close as the keys under my fingertips.

This comment was submitted entirely using the keyboard

How did you do that? Using a specific browser extension?

I am looking for ways to use my browser with keyboard only.

Not GP, but I'm currently using Vimium under Firefox. I've also heard of Vimperator and Tridactyl but never tried them.

If you're willing to ditch the mainstream browsers, there's Nyxt. For browsing static wikis from a tty, there's ELinks.

I use Qutebrowser which works well and is configurable, though there's no extensions which can be a bit of a bummer, but there's a built in adblocker which works pretty well at least.

Worth noting there is no need for an extension. This comment is also submitted entirely using the keyboard. Tab navigates to the "reply" button.

This. Windows is almost entirely usable with the keyboard, including the file explorer.

I have that shortened to o instead of xdg-open and jump to recent directory with zoxide an autojump alternative invoked with z followed by a few characters

So z [4 chars] enter o [2 chars] tab to complete enter is actually pretty quick.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com