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Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but even as someone who uses LLMs I don’t like them being allowed to run amok on my machine. I don’t trust them.

They’re also a crutch that shouldn’t be necessary for tasks so commonplace and simple as adding a network interface.

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They're the next step in UI for computers. Telling codex to add a network interface is easier than a GUI which is easier than a terminal program which is easier than manually editing a config file. None of those are a crutch. They are increasingly useful tools.

Frankly I find terminal applications considerably easier than most GUIs for most purposes, but I agree that natural language is generally an easier interface layer than either, and that an interface layer to the functions of a computer in general seems to be LLMs' destiny as a technology

I’ve been using command lines for over 25 years now and the thing that rubs me the wrong way about them is that nobody can agree on conventions with regard to how a CLI utility should work, which limits the amount of knowledge that’s transferable between them. Each effectively has to be learned individually which gets old fast.

I mean I think there's about as much convention and overlap as there seems to be for GUIs at least, and with much more discoverable clarification to boot

The issue with manpages is that they need to be pulled up independent of the program, they’re overly verbose, and often don’t include practical usage examples or if they do, bury them under miles of flags I’ll never use.

Sometimes CLI utility help commands fill the gap, but often they’re too spartan or don’t even exist.

Sure, documentation could always be better. My first attempt is usually tab-completion in the shell, then I'll try --help or something, then I usually go to either the archwiki or web search, which increasingly these days is equivalent to asking a chatbot, or asking an llm in a TUI. I find I'm generally not getting past the --help part of that more than 10% of the time, and the web or wiki search solves my problem with one query 99.99% of the rest of the time, but I'm willing to believe this is aided by experience.

No amount of experience using GUIs stops me from about 40% of the time I don't already know how to do something having to find a youtube video that explains what arcane path I need to take through a menu to find a setting, and if the menus have changed I might have to find the part of the video that explains what I'm looking for, watch it, realize it's changed, and hope I can find a more recent one. This goes for both native and web applications, for mobile and desktop, for every operating system I've ever touched. Sometimes there's a text explanation I can find, usually via a web search or llm. Sometimes I can guess at where something might be (Tools > Preferences? Wait maybe it's settings? Is this one a view setting? Hamburger menu? O wait no that one's in account settings. Ah, that one's under a different specific tab because the org that makes the software considers it an integration and also they A/B tested that it's more discoverable in this other place so they moved it since the youtube video I saw about it). On a web browser it's helpful to be able to dig into the page via debug consoles, sometimes I can search for some string I know is the name of the setting, or a value that's probably currently set. I can do all that, if necessary, but I'm certainly not comfortable claiming it's "easier"

I'm curious how you get codex to do anything when you don't have a working network?

In no way is a stochastic system that has zero ability to understand anything "the next step in UI". That's a recipe for disaster and even greater frustration.

fwiw, I haven't had this issue on Fedora on GNOME. Ubuntu/Debian have always been a pain for me, but Fedora has been great.

I see this as IBM/RedHat is a better steward/maintainer than other projects.

Yeah, the install was originally a GNOME one, but I added KDE after because it handles some things better. For example, GNOME tray item extensions will crash some tray-item-spawning programs running under WINE/Proton, which isn’t a problem under KDE.

I think GNOME gets some things more correct (it has a much better grip on design for instance), but I don’t agree with its strictly-minimalist philosophy that makes the macOS desktop look full-featured in comparison.

XFCE and Cinnamon are probably the closest to striking the right balance as far as I’m concerned (and are boring in a good way) but sadly they don’t get a fraction of the development resources that the big guys get.

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