[rescue] Happy New Year! RIP, Sun/Solaris...

[Jochen Kunz]

On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:22:21 -0500
Phil Stracchino <alaric at metrocast.net> wrote:

> Frankly, the entire *BSD userspace is a bit on the primitive side.  What
> I don't understand about this is that the true *BSD zealots (of which
> there fortunately seem to be none on the list that I am aware of) appear
> to regard it as a point of pride.
OK. As a (Net)BSD zealot I'l take up this trolling. ;-)

Well. I am useing Unix for close to 20 years now. I saw Linux rising.
It evolved from a Unix clone for Unix enthusiasts to a bad Windows
surrogate for Windows haters. Linux got "polluted" by lots of eye candy
stuff, even on the command line. The usual Linux distribution shoves
all this stuff down the users throat, even if he doesn't want it.
(vi is vim, /bin/sh is bash, "rm" is aliased to "rm -i", ...)

The *BSDs, especially NetBSD, concentrate on a lean and mean Unix
environement and try to carry on the Unix paradigm. That is the reason
why they don't add "user-friendliness" to the base system:
User-friendliness is a matter of personal taste. So instead of forcing
the user to use the "friendliness" that the distributor likes, the BSDs
give control to the user. This way the user can decide what he wants.
The base system is really what the name tells: A base where the user
can build on top what ever he wants. That is the reason why the *BSD
userspace is so "primitive": It doesn't bother you with things you don't
want. Instead you get the tools to bild what you want. E.g. An emacs
user doesn't need vim, but most linux distributions install vim anyway.
*BSD come with nvi, as a Unix has to have a vi(1). If you want vim, or
emacs, well just install it. pkgsrc will do for you.

To my experience: "user-friendliness" allways gets into my way and
prevents me from doing my work fast and efficient.
-- 


\end{Jochen}

\ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}