Murphy argues that GUI administration is much better than the command line (CLI).
Here are my thoughts:
I agree that a GUI is important for basic configuration - mapping drives etc. However, GUIs quickly get overly complex, witness some of MS admin tools. In order to have a 1000 options they all have to be displayed clutering the GUI and making it hard to use. GUI do not generally follow the unix philosophy of small sharp tools.
If you do the command once on the command line you can easily script it. Or you can copy the lines out of your .bash_history file and create a script. Administering 100 machines becomes as easy as administering 1 machine. Once you get administrators understanding easy simple automation (without messy .vbs files) you allow them to be more efficient.
I guess my final arguement for CLI tools is that they have stood the test of time. Put a Microsoft Xenix administrator (cerca 1982 - over 30 years) in front of linux and they will quickly get stuff done. Windows Admin GUIs are constantly changing making someone who administered NT 3.51 would be mostly clueless about windows 2003.
A case in point happened to me last night. I upgraded to Ubuntu 5.10 and ran pppoeconf to setup my DSL connection. It failed repeatedly so I simply overwrote my /etc/ppp directory with my old backed up copy - typed pon and Voila it worked! When GUI tools fail you are often left clueless.
Posted by Anthony at October 14, 2005 09:06 AM