This is not a new idea of mine, nor anyone else but I thought I might as well post it anyways. Any *nix user has probably grown to love the console. While bash and vim are quite nice apps like htop and mutt deserve equal praise. I love the fact that these apps can be easily run remotely in a screen session and that i never have to touch a mouse to do work. So much thought has been put into ease of use because hiding in a menu or dialog box somewhere is not possible. Key bindings are really nice. There are still many important apps that i think are best done in console.

I think my main reason for disliking Windows is the lack of a decent shell, and command-line tools.

my spelling:P sucks so i hate command-line tools.

I wanted a simple gotoxy() facility without all the WriteConsole() nonsense, so I looked in winduhs help for how to install ansi.sys on XP. After following the instructions to the letter (and a reboot), ansi.sys was still not running. WinBug #205345690

I few weeks ago i found a really nice process manager called htop. Its basically top on steroids. For example you can scroll down to your process and send it any signal you want in a keystroke or two. Its very straight forward to use.

http://htop.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=screenshots

i think cygwin is invaluable but fails to bring the whole experience. Cut and paste is lacking for instance (it uses a standard windows console! yuk!). Not everything is in the right place.

Well, it's ugly Does it have both intelligent copy & paste, as well as scrollback?

Yes you can.

{"name":"590441","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/1\/012ca4010493b1111f31d28aada2ec9d.png","w":667,"h":375,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/1\/012ca4010493b1111f31d28aada2ec9d"}

Another problem I had with MSYS was that it emulates a UNIX environment. I really want a version of bash that support DOS drive letters and things. I mean, I can even handle /d:/path, with / being a pseudo-directory containing only drive letters.

Do that regularly. Actually, links is very easy to use. Try clicking in the top of the console window, and you'll get a flashy menubar with pulldown menus.

I don't know tin, but sendmail and fetchmail are not e-mail clients. As for mutt against Evolution... I use mutt almost daily and looked at Evolution once a while ago (years, possibly, can't remember), found it too confusing at first glance and never looked at it again.
That said, I do use KMail to handle multiple mail accounts.

Fun isn't it, how people value different things.

Oh, definately.

/ is the MSYS root directory (e.g. C:\MSYS), but the Windows drives are accessed in the following way:
/c for <tt>C:</tt>
/d for <tt>D:</tt>
/c/WINNT for C:\WINNT
etc.

Honestly, I used it to compile Allegro, and because it was so ugly, never went back That scrollbar is hideous! Also I have Cygwin and MSYS memories both to sort out

And I suppose some of you are thinking that I'm just searching for a reason to not like it, but this is my second reason for disliking windows: Windows' GUI is ugly and inefficient. KDE is pretty and I have it streamlined for my machine.

ahh.. now that there is one of the things I love about Linux! How very configurable things are if you can be bothered to learn how! Once you have a setup that suits you it's awesome.. and devestating when you lose it all for want of a backup! Been there done that multiple times...:-/

well yes but... well it seems that you're frequently running into walls with modding Windows.. you often seem to need this App or that explorer replacement to be running first, and I always seem to be put off even trying with Windows. The default is just... accepted and I never really feel like tryying to customize things to fit my needs or tastes..even if that would improve my personal productivity. I dunno maybe it's just my Twilight Zone outlook on things...