Command line questions

[Michael Scottaline]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:22:02 -0700
Tom Lombardo <tlombardo at caserdoo.com> insightfully noted:

>I'm starting to get a handle on using the command line, but the book I 
>have fails to answer a few questions:
>
>1.  How can you open a program like OpenOffice from the command line?
==========================
Depending on the "path" you might have to type the full path to the executable
command:  ~/OpenOffice.org/ooffice (or something like that, depending on the
version.
=======================
>2.  using just the command line, how do you install a program from the 
>.tar or .gz file you get from the download?
================================
tar zxvf downloaded.program.tar.gz

now cd to the newly created directory

./configure
make
su
[password for root]

make install
=============================
>3.  How do you uninstall a program? (I need to wipe my copy of 
>RealPlayer clean and re-install it.)
==========================
depends on how it was installed.  RPM????  From source??????
=========================
>4.  When you get good at using the command line, do you get to the point 
>where you don't even use the GUI (I have RedHat v8)?
============================
My window manager of choice (for now) is ratpoison.  No menues, no icons.  I
have a few hotkey combinations in my .ratpoisonrc file to open some frequently
used programs (e.g., sylpheed, pheonix, Textmaker, emacs, xmms, etc), then the
rest from command line.
==========================
>5.  If you launch applications and all the rest from the command line, 
>does the machine run faster overall?
=========================
Depends on the machine, but if you can avoid the more bloated desktop
environments like KDE or Gnome, yes your machine will likely run faster.
HTH,
Mike
-- 
"The man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 
years of his life"
--Muhammad Ali