If you've read my Linux content here on Ghacks enough, you have most likely noticed my preference for not using the MySQL command line. That is not to say I don't ever use it, I just prefer tools to help make that aspect of database use easier.

What has my brain turning today is a simple thread in the Ubuntu Forums that sparks the age-old discussion about the usefulness of the CLI over GUIs.

I run across people that get confused as to what a GUI is. Of course a GUI stands for Graphical User Interface and can be applied several ways and methods, but I want to focus on 3 things for this post... The 3 I want to hit on are Xorg, Desktop Environment and Window Manager.

It’s one of the more popular culture wars in the free software community: GUI versus CLI (graphics versus the command-line). Programmers, by selection, inclination, and long experience, understandably are attracted to textual interactions with the computer, but the text interface was imposed originally by technological limitations. The GUI was introduced as a reply to those problems, but has undergone very little evolution from 1973 (when it was invented at Xerox PARC) to today. So why can’t we do better than either of these tired old systems?

This article presents some mockups (or models) for the possible future interface of the GIMP. They arrive following the launching of a project called “GIMP UI Redesign”.

We're all familiar with the "big two" desktops for Linux — KDE and GNOME. Of course, there are many more to choose from. SymphonyOS is a departure from the normal desktop interface.