Shell command history
Joining a meme bash—here’s my history of frequently used bash commands:
chetan@ckunte:~$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' |sort -rn|head80 ls71 cd61 sudo49 exit39 pwd30 ssh18 sftp13 svn13 fdisk12 rsync- Download this example: /inputfiles/bash-history.txt
Update: I suppose some explanatory notes for this otherwise meaningless gibberish (above) would help make sense of it all. CLI—the powerful command line interface (love it or hate it, but you can never ignore its simplicity and power)—is the reason I joined this otherwise mad meme.
I have been fortunate to have existed and experienced phases of computing interface from CLI to GUI. Most kids today aren’t so fortunate (or unfortunate—whichever way you look at it); they start with the Start button tucked on the bottom left corner of their screens every day of their lives.1
Unlike a GUI, CLI is old school, outdated, requires imagination, number of users—using it—shrinks everyday, but nevertheless in the hands of those who still use it, it is magic.
I had all but stopped using CLI, since the time John Brown phased out those HP Apollo 9000s running BSD in 1999-2000, in favor of personal computers. I have been refreshing those fond memories ever since I switched to Ubuntu. Today, I have no GUI software for rsync, ssh, svn, and sftp; rather I don’t need a GUI version for these.
The days of CLI as the primary interface are long gone; and in my opinion, it’s best this way. That said, CLI is still very much complementary to any modern OS; and in my opinion, it should never be phased out. It relates to productivity as much as it signifies nostalgia, if not more.
- Though it might be a little more obvious to users of operating systems that are Unix-like—Linux, OS X, for example. [←]