my favourite file manager? Midnight Commander works from any command line (providing framebuffer) thus, i am a command line junkie, and i couldn't care less about "visual". however, even on a command line it is nice to see whether a command is still running with a quick glance (minimized) without caring what files / stage is being processed... this is being said your argument is trollish. if an OS supports multi-tasking, it is unwise to stop "just" the display update, unless it is completely hidden in which case the display feeds are simply disabled. in command line this is achieved by redirecting standard output stream to /dev/null. what about standard error stream (#2 in shell parlance)? goes to /dev/null as well? what if the process hits an error and needs input from user? freezing a view of a running process is asking for (code) trouble. the last step before the dreaded "blue screen of death" LostDOS users are so familiar with >¦-)))))