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More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

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Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#11

Post by annnnd »

winteriscoming wrote: post #6

I prefer less. Incidentally, the other day I was on a CentOS system where I wanted to paginate a log file and typed in "less". Turns out, unlike more, less isn't installed by default. Was a bit surprised because I was under the impression that most Linux systems would have had it in their default install.

Debian doesn't install it by default either - agree, surprising. On another note, even more surprising is less's behavior with colored output (you have -r and -R switches, which are almost, but not completely, alike; and in neither of them does page-up render properly).

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#12

Post by mjevans »

voltagex_ wrote: post #2

>On Linux, more is part of the util-linux package but its manpage outright tells you to use less instead On minimal distros (say, Debian in the minbase configuration), more is more likely to be included than less. I haven't used any other small distros for a while but is util-linux normally there instead of other packages (actually, I wonder why minbase doesn't just use busybox).

There's still a need to at least include the hard/sym-link to less, and if you do that you should probably communicate why.

(E.G. so that when someone digs out a floppy disk from who knows how long ago with a recently deceased relative's old scripts on it they'll still work.)

Also, that more's features are more likely to end up in something seriously constrained (busybox) means that if you're ever stuck on a really low end system you can still use more to get some critical things done (like page through a file or result set too large to read correctly otherwise).

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#13

Post by pjmlp »

frederikvs wrote: post #8

I can see the fossilization, but I don't see what's so typical Unix of that phenomenon. Windows still includes cmd.exe with all its broken, retarded features, while it has powershell, which is supposedly (no experience myself) a little less retarded.

Not sure, but the default install of HP-UX, Solaris, Aix, Tru64, ... are pretty bare bones.

The last time I used one of those UNIXes (around 2006) everything seemed just like when I used UNIX for the first time in 1994.

Actually my first step after a successful installation when doing Solaris administration in 2000 was to visit http://www.sunfreeware.com

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#14

Post by mavhc »

flukus wrote: post #9
frederikvs wrote: post #8

I can see the fossilization, but I don't see what's so typical Unix of that phenomenon. Windows still includes cmd.exe with all its broken, retarded features, while it has powershell, which is supposedly (no experience myself) a little less retarded.

cmd.exe starts in a second, powershell takes 5 and then another 10 to actually be interactive. So it's still useful to me.

And then 5 mins while you google how to enable scripts

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#15

Post by sjellis »

I've used Linux for a decade-and-a-half, but I've never totally loved the shell, because of the need to learn this sort of pointless arcana. PowerShell was a massive step forward, and I had hoped that an Open Source, cross-platform equivalent would develop so that we could get past the current local maxima of 1970s-era design.

It's rather weird that the Open Source equivalent of PowerShell is now...PowerShell. Even if you don't like Microsoft or .NET, if you care about shells I'd recommend trying out PowerShell Core for an hour or two. It's only when you use it for a bit that you start to realize that you can guess commands based on the rules and actually be right and how big an improvement that actually is, rather than the current UNIX method of having to memorize more and more obscure trivia in order to get the computer to do what you want. I'm not sure if PowerShell itself is a long-term answer because of the .NET and Microsoft dependencies, but it gets lot of things right.

It's time we dropped the "Bash is good enough" arguments. There are now new Linux users starting every day, and asking them to learn that less is better than more is not funny.

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#17

Post by Annatar »

From the article:

I am not a fan of Solaris's long standing refusal to touch anything.

This is what people often deeply misunderstand about traditional UNIX operating systems: one of Solaris' greatest features, in stark contrast to GNU/Linux, is the insistence on not breaking backward compatibility. Solaris has however delivered less(1) as standard since Solaris 8, so there is nothing stopping one from configuring their PAGER to it. In fact, I do the exact same thing in my OS builds of Solaris and SmartOS. It's called system engineering.

illumos has the entire GNU userland in /usr/gnu and it's packed with new features under the hood, but those will almost never be introduced such that they break someone else's stuff; it's the very advantage differentiator illumos provides over anyone else! And it's good engineering, adding new funtionality while not breaking existing one.

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#18

Post by rollthehard6 »

sjellis wrote: post #15

I've used Linux for a decade-and-a-half, but I've never totally loved the shell, because of the need to learn this sort of pointless arcana. PowerShell was a massive step forward, and I had hoped that an Open Source, cross-platform equivalent would develop so that we could get past the current local maxima of 1970s-era design. It's rather weird that the Open Source equivalent of PowerShell is now...PowerShell. Even i…

I dunno, I'm a long term *NIX person (Solaris 1994-2011, Linux on and off 1994-2006, Linux mostly 2006-now) I am now involved in more Powershell scripting on Windows than I have ever done before. I don't see - Get-Content -Tail 10 FILE as an improvement on - tail -10 FILE

I think when it comes to the combination of intuitive command names and terseness when required, VMS' DCL is still unsurpassed. Having commands with sensible names that can the be shortened and a really useable HELP system was a major plus and I've not seen anything match that since.

Re: More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

#20

Post by Zardoz84 »

flukus wrote: post #9
frederikvs wrote: post #8

I can see the fossilization, but I don't see what's so typical Unix of that phenomenon. Windows still includes cmd.exe with all its broken, retarded features, while it has powershell, which is supposedly (no experience myself) a little less retarded.

cmd.exe starts in a second, powershell takes 5 and then another 10 to actually be interactive. So it's still useful to me.

Plus who would use these weird script language. Common! Even bash scripting it's more easy that powershell!
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