24 Mar
2017
24 Mar
'17
1:15 p.m.
On Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 20:28 Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Personally, I sort of get the ls<something> model. ls is how you list
things, <something> is how you say what you want to list. Is it Unix
like? Hmm, perhaps not. Is it useful? Like a lot of stuff that Linux
did, hell yes it's useful. I've written perl scripts to paw through
/proc and /sys to do the same thing and each time I've found a ls<xxx that does what I want I have gleefully tossed
my script.
Linux is weird. It's not elegant like the early unix systems, it's
not as well put together if you look at it through unix glasses (and
don't get me started on plan 9 glasses). But it is *useful*. They
favored useful over elegant. I don't think they disliked elegant,
I suspect that many of us would say they didn't have the good taste
to do elegant, whatever. It's useful. I'll take that. And it's
really not that bad. Unless you are grumpy and want a perfect world.
(From a mainly Linux background - I'm curious where the rust stains are)
Everything is still a file. I've got some arguments about the Linux kernel
build process (having to bootstrap your config system seems wrong to me -
or creating a totally new format for the config - kconfig) and don't really
appreciate their stance on security and don't really appreciate a thousand
files in etc vs using /usr/local/etc for most things.
I guess one could argue that sysfs is a bit much, and I've obviously seen
the arguments over systemd (and I admit that could've been handled better
both politically and technically) but all in all, I think that both are
decent systems.
But the system itself (and distros) seem to be pretty Unix like to me. Of
course, this is from someone who uses the hell out of the shell
autocomplete (many zsh compdef and the like) and opens new files in vim
using the servername of an existing vim instance and loves
scripts/libraries that go outside of UTF to display cool things (namely
progress bars and select bubbles) and abuses bash extglob and sits in a
split tmux (sometimes with a split vim), so... Maybe the old school Unix
mentality is lost on me.