just what I needed

Story: Connect to Wi-Fi from CLI in LinuxTotal Replies: 3
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tuxchick

Jul 24, 2011
12:00 PM EDT
Excellent step-by-step howto that works. Network Manager works well most of the time, but sometimes when I'm traveling it bumps into poorly-configured wifi networks and gets confused.

Some Linuxes use dhclient instead of dhcpcd.

My gripe against GUI config tools, like Network Manager, is they work one way, and if that fails you have no way of debugging and figuring out what went wrong, or alternate options to try. It seems the trend is to make them more limited, instead of more capable.
phsolide

Jul 24, 2011
12:30 PM EDT
You've just summed up the wrongness with current GUIs: unless the designer thinks of what you want to do, you can't do it.

This is opposed to command line interfaces, where if you can think of it, you can do it. I believe this derives from the fact that a CLI has a grammar. You can describe things in a language with grammar that you can't in the rebus of a GUI. Given the correct type of grammar (generative in the philosophical jargon), you can describe new things, things un-conceived of before.

That's where we want to be, in possession of a generative interface.
tuxchick

Jul 24, 2011
12:45 PM EDT
Some GUIs are excellent, with a logical flow and organization, and some have 'view log' buttons, and places to enter custom CLI options. Those are three GUI features I wish were universal.
taranasus

Jul 24, 2011
1:00 PM EDT
Hey! Glad it helped!

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