Why not just go to Bash or ZSH?
So that it can be maintained in tree
FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
41–50 of 154 posts
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
he was pissed! and, really didn't like terminal colors when you ran 'ls' (so I showed how to unalias ls) At this point I don't want to learn any new tricks, either. I'm sticking with bash for the rest of my life.
I've been trying to stick with bash for at least 20 years (I did have a brief tcsh phase before that) since a time when sticking with it meant having to install it on every unix system I touched. However, now that MacOS defaults to zsh, I'm starting to wonder if I should summon up the effort to change again.
personally, I don't have interest in zsh because bash is the default shell in Linux, which is the UNIX system I use (I find mac's unix to be really a weird variant). Mac switching to zsh is just more evidence they're diverting from the mainstream.
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
In those days people mainly used ! expansion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_shell#History . I know many people who are incredibly good at using ! expansion to edit previous commands ("change that command 5 lines ago to rm -rf this other folder") but it's a bit of a footgun.
Right, but the up arrow didn't get in their way, right? So why get mad? I imagine that how it worked for them before is that the up arrow would move the cursor to the previous line into the output of the previous command, while feeding the arrow key escape sequences to the shell prompt as part of the command. IOW, a pretty useless and annoying key right? Why even press it? How did they notice readline?
from what I can tell he was looking hard for problems.
He also noticed that if you ran 9 "yes" commands on a 8 core machine, the CPU wasn't allocated in 8/9ths units (one process always got a lot less CPU). he was used to much more predictible CPU scheduler on multiprocessor systems (spoilt by TruCluster). Linux later adopted a better scheduler (fair share) so imho he was right on that one, even if "yes" is a terribly performance metric.
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#44I am not a freebsd user, been on linux since 1992, but most of the time I read something about freebsd users and it seems like they want to be some older unix, like Solaris or True64 or something.
Pre-1992 it was SunOS and yes that is exactly what we want (without all the security holes). SunOS was BSD and Nirvana as far as Unix goes. Solaris was SysV and quickly earned the nickname "Slowlaris". For me FreeBSD is the functional descendant of SunOS. As for Linux I first tried it out in 1993 and was appalled that command line switches for most standard Unix utils had been arbitrarily remapped. Tried FreeBSD 1.0…
I think the Slowlaris moniker was not due to Solaris itself, but the speed of their SPARC processors. I used to work very closely with x86 Solaris for financial trading and it was performant (and stable!) on Intel hardware at the time (circa 2010). At the time Solaris 10 was feee as in beer. When Oracle took over they got rid of this and wanted $1K per CPU socket per year on non Sun/Oracle hardware. Needless to say everything went to Linux rather quickly.
I do prefer FreeBSD over most Linux distros (except Slackware) from a philosophical standpoint.
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#45In the recent history sh(1) has gain the missing features for it to become a usable interractive shell: - command completion - ... Too much bloat for my tastes.
Doesn’t command completion cause a disk scan? Which can be a problem if the system is failing in some way and you’re trying to recover.
Reminds me of the times I've had run out of space in a Linux system. When you SSH to the system and press TAB for command completion, all you get is some message regarding "the system running out of space".
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
what kind of research ? was it computing related or something really different ? I'm quite shocked I'm not 20 something either, I'm not chasing new shiny.. but a simple history access (arrows or search) is not an invasive disruptive toy feature.. alas
biomedical research, but the person I was helping "had written a kernel disk driver for VAX BSD back in the 80s" and I think they wanted things to more or less stay the same as BSD in the 80s. Which, as far as wishes go, isn't terrible.
yeah I guess he earned the right to have his ways :)
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
That says a thing or too about habits. Was he pissed or was it just a light comment ? I'd be sad to see an educated person refuse interesting new tricks (readline causes no regression or loss right ?)
It's delicate. The noob me chased after new tricks with much more enthusiasm than the current me. Over time, priorities change, and now I just want to get stuff done and for tools to get out of the way. I'd appreciate new tricks that bring quite a lot of benefit to my workflow, but the little tricks I'd rather let fly past me. If the tools such as base environment changes way too often, I'd be annoyed as well - not b…
I totally understand that, I'm not a young mind anymore, and I get that most of these are pointless superficial tricks. I spend most of my days venting about the state of computing (especially since web2.0 came and replaced a lot of stuff with bloated regressions in many offices)
But I considered readline a good addition, not a waste of time and neurons.
ps: I stopped using zsh/fish, my emacs theme is the vanilla theme.. you forget about these 'improvements', for real tasks they don't matter.
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pre-1992 it was SunOS and yes that is exactly what we want (without all the security holes). SunOS was BSD and Nirvana as far as Unix goes. Solaris was SysV and quickly earned the nickname "Slowlaris". For me FreeBSD is the functional descendant of SunOS. As for Linux I first tried it out in 1993 and was appalled that command line switches for most standard Unix utils had been arbitrarily remapped. Tried FreeBSD 1.0…
I think the Slowlaris moniker was not due to Solaris itself, but the speed of their SPARC processors. I used to work very closely with x86 Solaris for financial trading and it was performant (and stable!) on Intel hardware at the time (circa 2010). At the time Solaris 10 was feee as in beer. When Oracle took over they got rid of this and wanted $1K per CPU socket per year on non Sun/Oracle hardware. Needless to say e…
It wasn't just old hardware. Upgrading from SunOS to the early Solaris versions on the same hardware was noticeably slower. 2.4 was the first usable version IMO and it improved a lot by the time 2.6 was out (but then they dropped support for older hardware).
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#49I am not a freebsd user, been on linux since 1992, but most of the time I read something about freebsd users and it seems like they want to be some older unix, like Solaris or True64 or something.
Pre-1992 it was SunOS and yes that is exactly what we want (without all the security holes). SunOS was BSD and Nirvana as far as Unix goes. Solaris was SysV and quickly earned the nickname "Slowlaris". For me FreeBSD is the functional descendant of SunOS. As for Linux I first tried it out in 1993 and was appalled that command line switches for most standard Unix utils had been arbitrarily remapped. Tried FreeBSD 1.0…
> I wonder how many other greybeards that cut their teeth on SunOS prefer FreeBSD over Linux today?
Not a greybeard but I certainly reach for a BSD when I want to "use Unix".
Linux is a quivering basket case that cant decide if its Unix, MacOS or Windows.
Re: FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to stick with bash for at least 20 years (I did have a brief tcsh phase before that) since a time when sticking with it meant having to install it on every unix system I touched. However, now that MacOS defaults to zsh, I'm starting to wonder if I should summon up the effort to change again.
personally, I don't have interest in zsh because bash is the default shell in Linux, which is the UNIX system I use (I find mac's unix to be really a weird variant). Mac switching to zsh is just more evidence they're diverting from the mainstream.
> I find mac's unix to be really a weird variant
It's closer to BSD than it is to Linux. Not super similar, but closer, especially in ways one tends to notice on the command line.