Learning the GUI

The shell is my IDE.

I'm a command-line guy; I've been typing ls and make for 25 years. I type in for loops at the prompt. I develop my shell-scripts by writing one-liners, editing them until they're right, and then popping them into a file.

I am fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wild cats, --and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten dollar bill, he may throw in a panther,--hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson.

Oh, sorry. I got carried away.

Migrating to a graphical user interface is harder for me than for most, because I don't need it.

So, I've decided to learn how to use the Gnome GUI because, even though I don't need it, it sounds like it'd be fun.

Now, every morning, I go to the desktop (ctl-alt-D), open my bookmarks (ctl-B), select my Docs folder, double-click on an OpenOffice spreadsheet to "open it," and enter my weight and pedometer reading.

I know how to create new Places/Bookmarks. I can drag-and-drop files and folders into other folders. I can use ~/.hidden to hide files.

It's different. It's fun. I can now better help friends and relatives, who see the command-line as "bringing up a DOS window."