The text-based email reader available from a command line was way faster
Way faster indeed. I used to boot into and run from a bash shell. The concept then was that there was a small, fast, dedicated utility or script which did a specific task and no more. (It took Windows to introduce the concept of "Everything but the Kitchen Sink" in an app, which created tons of redundancies and bloat, to say nothing of being slower than a tortise.) To do more than one thing on a set of data one would use the pipe command ("|") and string the utilities together, piping the output from one into the input of the next, until you got what you wanted. Extremely fast, extremely easy ... IF ... you could remember the names of the utilities (exact spelling and case) and the many parameters (also called "switches") that came with each utility. It was good mental exercising and those with the best and most accurate memories did the best.
Since my memory has gone bye-bye, a good KDE desktop servers me well.
That targeting system on that rifle was something else. What a lot of people do not realize is that Linux is written under the GPL (General Public License). The only way they could charge $17K for that system would be if the money were tied up in the electronics and mechanics. Linux itself is free. And, since it comes with the system the GPL requires that the seller give to the buyer the exact source code that produced the version of Linux, and any other GPL utilities, that are running on the sighting system the buyer purchased. A lot of developers by pass the version 2 of the GPL by using version 3, which allows proprietary binaries to be called by the Linux kernel, and other binaries and/or shell scripts, without having to reveal the source code of those proprietary binaries. But, that doesn't matter to me. IF I could afford to fork over $17K for that rifle and targeting system I would. Once the target is tagged it can move and the shooter can move the rifle, but once the shooter presses the trigger the system computes the trajectory from the predicted target position and the predicted gun position and when a firing solution matches up the trigger solenoid is actuated. I hope folks noticed that for the fellow who was shooting the rifle it was the first time he had ever shot any firearm. And to hit dead center on a pie plate target at 1008 yards is phenomenal. It makes him a world class sniper.
