Windows GUI is being phased out?

[Lanz]

Do people think the Windows GUI will be a thing of the past soon, and that powershell skills will be essential in the future?

Do you use the 2008 GUI yourself, or do you do most stuff now in a shell?

 

[paradigm]

I'm about a 50-50 split, most of my general administration is done in GUI, whereas I pretty much exclusively use the Exchange Management Shell to administer Exchange 2007.

 

[iaind]

Personally, I doubt it.

Computing resources are becoming so cheap and so powerful (compared to years ago when GUIs first started to appear), I don't see the benefit in getting rid of them.

For day to day admin, I'll 90% of the time use the GUI, it's just quicker IME.

However, powershell etc is invaluable for more complicated stuff, automation etc

 

[Saundie]

I'm about a 50-50 split, most of my general administration is done in GUI, whereas I pretty much exclusively use the Exchange Management Shell to administer Exchange 2007.

This matches my usage pattern. For changing a single password, the GUI feels more efficient, but for changing atributes on a number of mailboxes the PowerShell CLI is fastest. With Server 2008 Server Core, the first thing I do is enable Remote Desktop and Remote Management; the syntax for joining a machine to the domain via netdom, for example, is heartbreakingly tedious to remember.

 

[Skidilliplop]

This matches my usage pattern. For changing a single password, the GUI feels more efficient, but for changing atributes on a number of mailboxes the PowerShell CLI is fastest. With Server 2008 Server Core, the first thing I do is enable Remote Desktop and Remote Management; the syntax for joining a machine to the domain via netdom, for example, is heartbreakingly tedious to remember.

I'd use a combination of both. On the machine itself doing netdom join /d: domain.com Computername on the PC because it's quicker than firing up RDP or VNC and doing it. But to move the PC into the correct OU I find it's simpler by GUI, especially if setting up a couple of PCs I can shift-click and drag n' drop them.

GUI has the middle ground between a single Object and a lot of objects. There will always be a point where there are enough that it's time consuming to manually CLI but not enough to make it worth the effort of writing and testing a script to automate it. So long as this situation exists there will always be a need for an easy to use GUI way of doing things.

Though all of this is based on the assumtion you took the time initially to create relevant shortcuts and set up custom admin consoles etc.

 

[J.B]

If not really given the powershell my full attention so most of my stuff is done in the GUI.

Although some Exchange functions are impossible without the use of PowerShell.

I've set up 08 Core as a DC,DHCP,DNS in a lab environment and frankly I couldnt see why anyone would chose to do this when a GUI uses so little resources vs the time spent typing the shell script, realising theres a problem, re reading it all trying to find the mistake etc. We ended up having a .txt document of all the commonly used/stupid long commands so we could just copy and paste them into the CLI.

But there will always be a need for the flexability and control for doing things on a large scale which the CLI accomodates for. In answer to your question though, I dont think we will see the end of a GUI anytime soon, if ever.

 

[m4cc45]

heh imagine telling people who use the PC that there shiny interface has now been replaced by a black command prompt box. People would, justifiably, explode. It's not going to be the end of the GUI for a very good while. There will be progress in touch and speech and I thnk that will be the next move forward.



M.