I have been in and out of quite a few distros over the years, keeping tabs on how things are going. I don't run Linux full time as a productivity system just yet, but I do like to stay up on what is new.

I have to use win2K for my work, and my preferred home system is OS/2, but I have a question about linux utilities that I would like to find, or learn why they don't exist.

I don't want to clone windows onto Linux :-) but there are some tools that I find useful. Among them is the task manager, and the ability to shut down wayward apps, and view running applications and processes..

I have learned the commands from the console to track and kill PIDS, and use it now and then, but I am left to wonder why this is not a GUI type tool that would simplify the process and make the transition from the dark side a bit easier? The same thought applies to installation/uninstallation of programs. Although I get by with command line rpm and apt-get commands, I am wondering how come there does not appear to be a graphical, gui based installation program. I can see how there are any number of issues with parameters and distros, but it would seem to not be that difficult to come up with a generic installer or task manager that could handle most of the load for doing the job.

I know linux users love the command line :-) but whenever I check out a distro, I see tons of tools and utilities that folks are coming up with, so I wonder why there are not more "commonly used" ones to help the newcomer get aquainted with Linux. Even a GUI based 'mount' utility would score pretty big in the newbie community.

There are others, but just in general, so many linux users seem content with the command line, which is great, but those who are coming from a total gui might find it easier to stay and fight through the learning curve, given a few friendly tools that they can relate to in order to control their system.

For those who might be inclined to say "go ahead and write one" I am hardly qualified :-)

Of course, I haven't searched the entire internet yet, so if these things exist, I could obviously use a pointer or a URL to track em down.

Thanks for listening.

John
Mandrake 10 at the moment, and finding it pretty nice.

There are gui tools to do these things, but the command line is more powerful. However, as far as the installs go, there are a number of gui tools - Synaptic is a gui front end for Apt and most distros will have an Add/Remove programs equivalent.

Since I always use 'top' to list my processes, I haven't looked at all into a gui version, but KDE has one I believe.

The KDE System Guard has a process table similar to Windows Task manager. KDE Disk Management is a GUI for (u)mounting file systems.