←back to thread

In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

(web.stanford.edu)
412 points conanxin | 1 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
Show context
pavlov ◴[27 Jul 24 09:56 UTC] No.41085505[source]▶
The CLI has a massive blind spot in today’s operating systems: it knows nothing useful about events.

Yet events are the primary way anything happens on a computer, whether it’s a user system or a server.

replies(6): >>41085537 #>>41085570 #>>41086080 #>>41087545 #>>41088178 #>>41090695 #
1. nonrandomstring ◴[27 Jul 24 10:14 UTC] No.41085570[source]▶
Annoying though it may be, you can run a program in the background that can write to your open terminal.

Just in userspace you have;

   dmesg -w

   tail -f /var/log/messages
There's also dbus to monitor on Linux systems and a lot of kernel hook tricks you can use to get a message pop up if an event happens.

Because it gets annoying to have a process splurge notification stuff to a term you are working in, that's why you have info-bars which many terminal emulators support.