• @[email protected]
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    1131 year ago

    If you’re using a GUI, that means whatever you’re doing you’re not doing a lot of it, since you don’t need to automate it. I would expect a world-class enterprise engineer to be able to automate most tasks, and from that they would be very comfortable with the command line.

    Can you do everything with a GUI that you can on a command line? Yeah probably, if the developer is at all the features properly. Can you automate it easily? No not at all. So the more you do something the more you tend to want to deal with the vocabulary of the command line because it’s more expressive and allows for automation.

    I will die on this hill!

    • @[email protected]
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      481 year ago

      Documentation too. Frontends change all the time, but CLI tools usually don’t, so you can usually rely on old documentation. But have you ever tried googling how to do something in MS office, found and article from half a year ago and found that none of the things it mentions exist anymore? It’s ridiculous how much time people waste trying to figure out stuff multiple times because it changes so much.

      • @rist097
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        201 year ago

        After long periods of not using GUIs, I found myself very confused every time I want to do something. I was trying to insert a code block into Power Point yesterday, took me half an hour of googling and didn’t manage to do it. With Latex, I googled and in 2 minutes I had a code block.

        • @[email protected]
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          251 year ago

          Given that Latex is a clusterfuck of legacy, it speaks volumes that it’s still so much easier to do things there rather than in powerpoint.

          With MS office I’ve also adopted a “fuck it, I’ll just take a screenshot” approach.

            • @[email protected]
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              41 year ago

              Yup, I tried doing it properly too when I started and now I don’t give a shit. If the company wants us to use crappy tools, that’s what they get.

              • What are you saying? The project is finished, the new stuff implemented and now you want to buy some fancy software and shedule 100 hours for documentation? We dont need that! Just help out your colleagues, when they have a question. They’ll all know what to do in no time!

    • @[email protected]
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      231 year ago

      Depends on what system you’re running, and especially what task you’re doing. Trying to operate firewall rules via CLI is an exercise in self-inflicted pain, as is trying to set a complex cron schedule without a handy calculator.

      • @ysjet
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        71 year ago

        on the contrary, CLI is the BEST way to deal with firewall rules.

        • @[email protected]
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          61 year ago

          Personally, I’d take it a step further. Firewall rules should be defined as code in a git repo. So if you’re building rules in a gui, you’re simply doing it wrong. While a cli and/or api should be used, that should be automated and invisible to a human.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        TIL there are people configuring firewalls via GUIs. Okay … I‘m do that too on my private equipment because I’m lazy. But it feels wrong doing so in an enterprise context.

      • Finn
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        11 year ago

        Junos CLI is a real treat. I work with the SRX line regularly, particularly the SRX4600 and the SRX300 series.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      CLI debuggers can’t hold a candle to the Visual Studio debugger. This is generally not something you automate, and I haven’t met many engineers that know gdb well. But pretty much anyone can use VS debugger.

  • Venomnik0
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    411 year ago

    Honestly, some things can be done faster/as fast on GUI. So really just use whatever increases your productivity.

    • @[email protected]
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      451 year ago

      IMO GUIs are always faster when it’s something you’ve never used before, or use very infrequently.

      CLI is better if you’re used to the task you’re doing, or automating things. But for infrequent tasks looking up the commands (or looking at old notes to find it) is very slow and rather annoying.

      • I Cast Fist
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        141 year ago

        Moving files across several subfolder levels tends to be much faster on a GUI. Finding files is usually much faster via CLI, even when you have to look up again how to use the find command of your choice

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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          31 year ago

          The more you use the commands the more you remember them. I got good at the CLI by forcing myself to use it for things I would normally do in a GUI. Now everyone thinks I’m a wizard which I won’t discourage

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Is there an instant GUI find tool on linux? find is very slow compared to using Everything on windows, and sorting results is really hard via CLI.

          • @SpaceNoodle
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            31 year ago

            Oh, you’re not aware of “locate”

            • @[email protected]
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              31 year ago

              I am but searching via CLI I’m not sure how to easily sort by last modified time, or restrict to a specific root path first.

          • KubeRoot
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            11 year ago

            I don’t know about GUI tools, but:

            Everything is so fast because it uses the index built into NTFS to find files by filename quickly, and NTFS is the definitive file system on Windows so it works everywhere.

            On Linux, there isn’t really an index built into the filesystem - some might have that, but I don’t know about it. That said, plocate is a common tool that uses its own index. You have to update the database when files change (you’ll probably have a job doing that daily), but searching the index is very fast.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I usually just make a bat or py script to move and create specific files to specific folders.

          I only do this because I’m lazy and numbering, renaming and creating folders is a drag and can be easily automated, but just copy/paste or cut/paste is faster in GUI, especially with alt tab and the new tab file system on windows.

        • @[email protected]
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          -31 year ago

          A GUI with a search function is always the best way to deal with filesystems, in my experience.

          • @SpaceNoodle
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            21 year ago

            Always orders of magnitude slower and near-infinitely less featureful, in my experience.

            • @[email protected]
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              01 year ago

              Your filesystem must be monstrously huge if it’s actually perceptibly slow. I also get tired of typing in long filenames with a ton of special characters I have to escape.

              • @SpaceNoodle
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                11 year ago

                You’ve never had to search through hundreds of gigabytes of source files, I guess. Congratulations.

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 year ago

                  No, I’ve never had that displeasure, Nothing I’ve worked on has been that big. My condolences.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      But you look way cooler when using the terminal for most of your stuff 💁‍♂️ also using a riced out window manager and riced out Vim config for which you spent hundreds of hours on customizing every aspect of it :p normal people don’t know what the fuck is going on on your pc so you can feel instantly feel superior to those normies! Ah also btw i use arch ;)

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      I use both. I use the CLI for a lot of stuff but I also use the GitHub Desktop fork for Linux lol. I don’t care how powerful git is in CLI, that gui is just so nice imo

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        It took me forever to realize I could edit config files in a graphical text editor. When you have a really long file it’s just nicer to have properly formated text wrapping and a scrollbar with a preview box.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        Exactly. Use the tools you have the way they fit you best. If it aids your work flow learn the CLI commands you use the most. If it’s something obscure or rarely used, use the gui.

        Another not mentioned benefit of becoming comfortable with using the cli is that you then can more easily script stuff.

  • @[email protected]
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    291 year ago

    To get annoyingly serious on a funny post, the one huge danger of GUIs that I’ve personally witnessed in many of my juniors is that they abstract away the need to understand the tool you’re using.

    I regularly use a Git GUI, and I might have to google the rebase command for more complex tasks, but I know how Git works. I know what I can do with rebase, even if I don’t exactly know how to. If you only live in the GUI, you can get far never understanding the system. Until one day, when you fuck up a commit or a push, and you’re totally hosed because there isn’t a pretty button with the exact feature you want in your GUI.

    • hellishharlot
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      71 year ago

      Somehow I’ve made it 7 years without messing up a git command that I couldn’t fix in like 2 seconds. I primarily use vscode’s source controller more featured source controllers like sourcetree feel overly complex and typing out git commands is fine but you spend more time doing that than you would with vscode’s approach. I’m really curious about what you mean by fuck up a commit or push

      • @BuiltWithStolenParts
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        71 year ago

        Try reverting a reverted commit (revert of revert, yes) while other team members are working on a branch which has the first revert. It’s super fun merging after that.

        (Or something of that effect, can’t remember the exact details of that fuckup)

        • hellishharlot
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          31 year ago

          I don’t think I will, mostly cause I work on a team of 1 right now which makes my branches wonderfully simple.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      Yeah, fuck that. It’s perfectly fine to build a GUI that makes things a bit easier, but make the GUI so that it resembles the fucking workflow. I hate that when I want to automate something thats super easy in the GUI and it takes AGES because there is no equivalent to what I’m doing in the GUI

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        I hate that when I want to automate something thats super easy in the GUI and it takes AGES because there is no equivalent to what I’m doing in the GUI

        glares angrily at Azure CLI

        • hellishharlot
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          21 year ago

          Azure CLI and AzPowershell are somehow so powerful and useful until they fall flat on their face.

  • So… my only requirement for my tools is that they have a well-supported CLI, and can be installed headless without graphical dependencies. Tools must be scriptable.

    That said, it’s nice to have a UI. My ideal configuration is a scriptable tool with a good API, and a separate GUI tool that can drive it.

    • @Aux
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      71 year ago

      One of the best tools I’ve used is SuperSlicer. It’s a slicer for 3D printers. It has GUI, it has CLI and it has a DLL/SO so you can add its features to your own application. And it’s open source if linking against an existing library is too hard for you, lol.

    • R0cket_M00seOP
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      191 year ago

      So far I don’t think anyone has interpreted the meme correctly, the wikiHow guy is supposed to be an obvious shortcoming expressed as a guy trying to convince himself it’s not a problem.

  • @[email protected]
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    211 year ago

    “graphical user interfaces make easy tasks easy, while command line interfaces make difficult tasks possible”

    • William E. Shotts Jr., The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction

    It has taken me a long time to get comfortable using a Linux CLI (definitely not as familiar with windows cmd prompt/powershell), and I know that if I log into a box anywhere, If it has sh or bash or some variant of those shells, I’ll be able to get by.

    Now, on my home server, moving & renaming a bunch of media files has me really wishing I had a DE installed there to Ctrl + click/Drag-n-drop…

    Also, I love using VScodium/Code as an IDE bc of its configurability & rich plugin ecosystem – but recently I had some performance hiccups with extensions not playing nice together and started (again) down the masochistic path of configuring neovim to use as an “IDE”…

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      Why not mount your server as a share and use your desktop GUI to manipulate files? Then you can do both.

    • Doc Avid Mornington
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      31 year ago

      I always feel that graphical interfaces make easy things difficult, in most cases. A bunch of figity clicking around, instead of a few keystrokes I could press with my eyes closed. They are more discoverable, though.

      If you use emacs, dired and wdired together are fantastic for managing files like that. You can even run dired over tramp, so you can manage files on a remote server that doesn’t have emacs installed, using the emacs on your desktop. But there are also good cli options, you might want to look at the rename command, as one that’s probably installed by default on any given distro. That’s outside my expertise, though, as I just use emacs.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        Yes I’ve used rename! In my case, I just need to rename and reorganize a bunch of movies & associated metadata files into directories. I don’t have too many stored digitally now, so I think just shaving the yak and doing it manually via file share will work for now.

        Never been an emacs user… Seems like quite a rabbit hole

    • cyruseuros
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      11 year ago

      Skip the masochism, try helix. Switched to that + zellij with about 20 lines of config and never looked back

      • cyruseuros
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        21 year ago

        Takes a second to get used to the keybindings but after about ~2w you can painlessly switch back and forth between vim and helix pretty much instantly

        • cyruseuros
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          11 year ago

          Feel free to ping me if I can help, at least in the form of starter configs/small hacks that emulate VS Code workflows or something :)

          Personally I was the guy that had thousands of lines of Vim and Emacs configurations, so I really had to do this to manage the time sink (like you I had a stint with VS Code in between that eventually stopped working for me)

  • @[email protected]
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    161 year ago

    Someone told me that windows server UI interface has more options than CLI. I got scared of windows server (how do you repeatedly Setup the same server, with a screenshot documentation ???)

    • @[email protected]
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      131 year ago

      It’s been a while since I’ve found that true. You can do everything you want to do in powershell now days.

      • @ludwig
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        31 year ago

        Yeah, I think MS started adding PowerShell for everything after server 2012 R2.

    • @Aux
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      61 year ago

      First of all, most Windows settings are in the registry, so you don’t have to go to the UI, you can just upload new settings straight into the registry through CLI.

      Second, PowerShell exists and it’s awesome!

      And third, you can always use UI automation tools if you’re bad at registry and PowerShell. Just record your session and run whenever needed.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      Newer versions of Windows can give you the exact Powershell code it’s executing based on what you’ve configured in the gui. This is still extremely inconsistent across Windows services though. I don’t know that I’d feel comfortable running a headless windows server yet. Too much stuff still assumes you’ll use the gui for most things.

      • @hemko
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        1 year ago

        To be honest, if you really need Windows servers you should run core if possible. Basically all Microsoft’s management shit can be run remotely from your jump/management host. That said a lot of shit requires gui and refuses to run on core, like adsync

          • @hemko
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            There’s slight difference in resource usage of course, which does scale if you’re unlucky enough to have lot of them.

            Minimum ram required is 512mb for core, 2gb for desktop experience so we can safely assume keeping the gui usable eats some 1.5gb memory. 500 servers adds some 750gb overhead in theory.

            Then there’s of course the fact that less bloat will generally add up to less problems. Ever rdp to a server and start menu refuses to open or other weird gui shit. That’s just wasting your time.

  • thelastknowngod
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    151 year ago

    I think I really only use GUIs if I am learning something new and trying to understand the process/concepts or if I’m doing something I know is too small to automate. Generally once I understand a problem/tool at a deeper level, GUIs start to feel restrictive.

    Notable exceptions are mostly focused around observability (Grafana, new relic, DataDog, etc) or just in github. I’ve used gh-dash before but the web ui is just more practical for day to day use.

    For context, I’m in SRE. I feel like +90% of my day is spent in kubernetes, terraform, or ci/cd pipelines. My coworkers tend to use Lens but I’m almost exclusively in kubectl or the occasional k9s.

    • JackbyDev
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      41 year ago

      Searching a log file? I want less. Searching all log files? I want log aggregation lol.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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        21 year ago

        If I knew what I was looking for I could grep all the log files and pipe the output to another file to aggregate them.

        • JackbyDev
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          11 year ago

          The problem is that they’re all on different servers. Once you use log aggregation stuff like DataDog, Splunk, or Kibana you get it, but before it’s hard to see the benefits. Stuff like being able to see a timestamp of when an error first appeared and then from the same place see what other stuff happened around the same time.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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            11 year ago

            If I had dozens or hundreds of servers that would make a huge difference, but for under a dozen I think the cost of setting that all up isn’t worth the added benefit. Plus if the log aggregation goes down (which I’ve seen happen with some really hairy issues) you’re back to grepping files so it’s good to know how.

            • JackbyDev
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              11 year ago

              Totally. I’m talking more from the enterprise perspective. Even apart from that I’m not sure if the cost is worth it at that scale. Even using foss solutions the dev hours setting it up might not be worth it.

      • Doc Avid Mornington
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        11 year ago

        One log file, or all, I want grep or awk, maybe with find in front, possibly throw some jq on top if something is logging big json blobs.

        • JackbyDev
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          11 year ago

          I feel you. The problem with a lot of Elastic style document search engines is that they don’t ever let you search by very explicit terms because of how the index is built. I believe the pros outweigh the cons but I often wish I could “drop into” grep, less, and others from within the log aggregation tool.

    • @SpaceNoodle
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      31 year ago

      Github’s UI is total garbage compared to basic git commands, though.

      • thelastknowngod
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        11 year ago

        You can’t manage pull requests, github actions, repo collaborators, permissions, or any number of the dozens of other things github does just from basic git commands.

  • @[email protected]
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    141 year ago

    PSA: Since his finger and the reflection touches, he’s likely looking into a one way mirror. There’s someone behind the glass.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      I just walked around my house touching all my mirrors and they all do this. Hope they’re not on to me now… Think I’ll wait for night and try to make a break for it.

    • @puppy
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      41 year ago

      Or it’s an extremely thin glass.

  • @esadatari
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    121 year ago

    i feel you bro. people in here talking shit like they don’t know that some net devices are literally made for webgui first and foremost, and programmatic changes don’t work for every api even if it says it’s supported (fucking looking at brocade).

    if you’re used to cisco cli, shit like juniper or palo alto or f5 can be intimidating when looking at the configs.

    but i swear to fucking god if you use gui instead of cli for cisco, we gon have words.

    • @Ricaz
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      11 year ago

      Cisco and Juniper CLIs are terrible imo… Why won’t they just use a proper modern set of tools instead of their own proprietary shit that doesn’t interface with anything else?

      • @esadatari
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        31 year ago

        because cisco fears change and doesnt innovate technologies so much as acquire other companies’ tech and frankenstein it into their portfolio.

        • @Ricaz
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          31 year ago

          Had to get some metrics out of an old Cisco box that weren’t available through SNMP, and the only solution I could come up with was to periodically SSH some commands and regex the results.

          That required way too much shell-foo and the SSH daemon would just randomly refuse/drop connections.

          If only there was some kind of standard metric API that every other modern software supports out of the box…

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      So much GUI, and never a mouse click. Only the best hackers get a whole new screenfull of GUI for every one of their seemingly random key presses.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      To be fair. In Star Trek they’re not really using a GUI like we use a GUI today. They are using a high level AI to take voice commands. And they use the visuals to confirm. That is not what gooies are today

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        Yeah but Scotty knows all the keyboard shortcuts for a classic Mac which means that they still somehow exist in the future. So…we can safely assume that shortcuts as they exist now are present in the same mapping as they are in the future which means we have no excuse not to memorize them. Not just copy and paste but opening and maximizing windows via shortcut. It is apparently something that still needs to be done in the future.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          Scotty’s special. The rest of the future people are confusing each other to death on Stack Overflow, which by then has centuries of outdated answers and every possible grammatical question is a duplicate.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            Scotty is totally the kind of engineer with a garage full of retro gear he has only to appreciate how things used to be done. He learns how to run a classic Mac for the thrill of archaeological engineering