<P> In the Beginning...Was the Command Line is an essay by Neal Stephenson which was originally published online in 1999 and later made available in book form (November 1999, ISBN 978 - 0380815937). The essay is a commentary on why the proprietary operating systems business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software . It also analyzes the corporate / collective culture of the Microsoft, Apple, and free software communities . </P> <P> Stephenson explores the GUI as a metaphor in terms of the increasing interposition of abstractions between humans and the actual workings of devices (in a similar manner to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and explains the beauty hackers feel in good - quality tools . He does this with a car analogy . He compares four operating systems, Mac OS by Apple Computer to a luxury European car, Windows by Microsoft to a station wagon, Linux to a free tank, and BeOS to a batmobile . Stephenson argues that people continue to buy the station wagon despite free tanks being given away, because people do not want to learn how to operate a tank; they know that the station wagon dealership has a machine shop that they can take their car to when it breaks down . Because of this attitude, Stephenson argues that Microsoft is not really a monopoly, as evidenced by the free availability of other choice OSes, but rather has simply accrued enough mindshare among the people to have them coming back . He compares Microsoft to Disney, in that both are selling a vision to their customers, who in turn "want to believe" in that vision . </P> <P> Stephenson relays his experience with the Debian bug tracking system (#6518). He then contrasts it with Microsoft's approach . Debian developers responded from around the world within a day . He was completely frustrated with his initial attempt to achieve the same response from Microsoft, but he concedes that his subsequent experience was satisfactory . The difference he notes is that Debian developers are personally accessible and transparently own up to defects in their OS distribution, while Microsoft pretends errors don't exist . </P> <P> The essay was written before the advent of Mac OS X . A recurring theme is the full power of the command line compared with easier to learn graphical user interfaces (GUIs) which are described as broken mixed metaphors for' power users' . He then mentions GUIs which allow traditional terminal windows to be used . In a Slashdot interview in 2004, in response to the question: </P>

Neal stephenson in the beginning was the command line pdf