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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

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Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#101

Post by cat199 »

omginternets wrote: post #7

While entertaining, I'm left with the following question: if not UNIX, then what? Are there any successful non-UNIX-y OSes that are worth checking out? I may embarrass myself here, but I was under the impression that BSD, Plan 9, Solaris and HP-UX were all UNIX-y ...

still worth checking out? or just worth checking out?

The coherency of VMS (and the VAX platform) is quite amazing -

Coherent command line interfaces, API's, documentation, hardware, and software, even down to coherent part numbering made by a single company, from small workstations up to larger scale minis, and nearly transparent clustering.

I mention VAX specifically, since by the time Alpha arrived, DEC was competing in a much different environment, and was subsequently merged, etc etc etc.

IBM and other mainframe-ey OS's, though definately arcane, have some amazing facilities (parallel sysplex.. multi architecture systems that are completely redundant and hot-swappable) and capabilities since the late 60s/70s which are only now being caught upto in crude and hackish form at the present time with commmercial PC servers.

BeOS had some cool concepts.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#102

Post by pjmlp »

noobermin wrote: post #99
pjmlp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there is any worse UI tooling available.

Than win32!? Are you serious? Xlib is pretty bad but win32 is absolute bonkers. Or are you saying the opposite?

Of course I am serious.

I do UI coding since Amiga 500 days and never found so borked API, with more parameters and configuration structures than Xlib, without any support for printing or proper use of fonts.

The amount of wasted hours of my life using xlsfonts....

And those bare bones widgets, yet another headache.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#103

Post by pjmlp »

astine wrote: post #89
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that GNU is Not UNIX and many companies still have UNIX boxes without GNU on them.

Having worked extensively with some of those non-GNU Unixes, I feel that the difference is almost academic. Even if your box comes with nvi rather than vim, it probably still has Perl, and the bash shell is likely installed if not set as the default. Overall, the feel is not that different.

nvi is already an improvement over plain vi.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#104

Post by bjourne »

zeptomu wrote: post #67
bjourne wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do opengl efficiently over the network. At least xorg can't. Most applications uses opengl these days. For me, I've been using Linux fulltime for the last 15 years and I have never, not even once, had the need to connect to a remote X11 server. ssh has always been enough for me.

> Most applications uses opengl these days. Now 'most' is a relative term, but I do not think that's true at all. There are very few applications that use OpenGL. Obviously games are an exception, but if you count in all GUIs I would say mostly target X11 (via Gnome or KDE).

GNOME and KDE can also use opengl for some tasks if it is available. But right, most applications doesn't directly use opengl. I believe if it weren't such a pita to integrate opengl in desktop appliations (thanks to X11's bad design), many more applications would be using it.

To give you an example, think about desktop effects. On Windows, several applications such as Explorer makes parts of their windows semi-transparent. It's a nice simple effect that is impossible (without tons of hackery) to replicate using X11.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#105

Post by dahart »

dsmithatx wrote: post #73

When I read this 20 years ago I would never have believed I'd be typing this on a Mac laptop running yet another Unix variant. This line is now so funny... As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts. Just a simple, elegant life: “Your application has unexpectedly quit due to error number –1. OK?”

Ha! I switched to Mac so I could have pipes, grep and bash. I personally believe a big reason for the Mac resurgence has to do with the switch to UNIX. I was on Windows using Cygwin for years before anyone I knew was using a Mac. Then OSX came out, and all of a sudden all the academics I knew switched to Mac, and a couple years later most of the professional programmers I knew had switched.

The great thing about a Mac is that I get to have my user level UNIX without having to know anything about the system level UNIX. I don't need to be a sysadmin to run the thing. I get grep and pipes without having to know all the crazy commands to tweak networks settings and display timings and boot scripts. When OSX came out, that was the state of Linux, you couldn't be just a user of it, you had to know way too much to get it running.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#106

Post by mi100hael »

raverbashing wrote: post #11

Unix is weird because it evolved organically and without a unified direction. But it remains because power and familiarity beat user experience. Yes, the "pure" Unix tools are awful, GNU improved on their usability a lot. But they're still a simple command that does something. Except Autotools. Those should burn in eternal damnation.

"Autotools is the worst form of build system, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -Churchill, probably

In all seriousness, what's your preferred alternative? Seems like Autotools is a pain, but it gets the job done and is widely available. I haven't found a build system for C projects that is:

- Less complicated

- Available from default package repos so others who clone don't have to track down some esoteric package themselves

- Free software that runs standalone on a shell, not in an IDE or whatever

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#110

Post by Mithaldu »

zeptomu wrote: post #67
bjourne wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do opengl efficiently over the network. At least xorg can't. Most applications uses opengl these days. For me, I've been using Linux fulltime for the last 15 years and I have never, not even once, had the need to connect to a remote X11 server. ssh has always been enough for me.

> Most applications uses opengl these days. Now 'most' is a relative term, but I do not think that's true at all. There are very few applications that use OpenGL. Obviously games are an exception, but if you count in all GUIs I would say mostly target X11 (via Gnome or KDE).

I think he means "most by total runtime".
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