There’s a reason it was named after Eunuchs

[ornoth]

Call me a revolutionary, but I don’t see any reason why we should use an operating system that was intentionally designed to be user-unfriendly, and which was designed 40 years ago, back when 8-track tapes were the state of the art and the two-byte difference between “copy” and “cp” was really, really important.

I still marvel as my Linux weenie coworkers have to kill hours rebuilding their entire file system because they powered Unix down without going through the formal shutdown process. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that it allows users to create a file called “~”. Just don’t ever try deleting it, because the tilde is also a shorthand notation for your home directory! Now ain’t that intuitive? And don’t forget the Windows Find post I made last year at this time…

Unix is a fossil, and running Linux is like making your Twenty-First Century laptop backwards-compatible with rocks. I’m not saying Windows is especially great, but I am saying that Unix is not a serious platform for anyone who wants to actually get work done, as opposed to dicking around with obscure incantations.

That was what I was thinking when the following exchange occurred at work:

Orn: Why don’t my Windows keys work?
Jay: Install Linux
Orn: Yeah, like I want to type Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T-Backspace-U to login.

I think that kind of key combination is pretty typical of Unix. I just made up a completely random and undocumented sequence of keys on the spot to poke fun at Unix’s patently stupid fixation on arcane and unintuitive escape sequences. Jay thought it was funny and used that exchange as his instant messenger away message for a while.

Ironically, one of our senior technical architects noticed Jay’s away message. He runs Linux, and out of curiosity and sheer stupidity, actually typed it into his Linux box.

What did it do? It killed his X Windows. Brilliant! Gotta love a system that’ll let you type a random key combination and crash your whole windowing system.

You may now picture all the Unix weenies who read this post doing the same thing, just to see what happens…

There is only one Stupid Unix Trick, and that’s ever installing that shit.

Comments

[dafyddcyhoeddwr.livejournal.com]

I've hated Unix since I was first introduced to it, and it still boggles me that our DBAs are not only still fluent in emacs, but some even prefer it to a gui text editor ...

The day that Apple built OS X over Unix was a very sad day for me. I'm fortunate to never have had to delve beneath the amazingly resiliant GUI that is Apple's claim to fame.

I, for one, would dearly love for Unix to vanish into the ether. Or at least get sophisticated enough to enable a password of more than 8 bytes!

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Certainly I think Unix/Linux/BSD/System V/Solaris/Whatever is bad for a *desktop*. For servers they're useful.

Being a DBA, I can tell you that a GUI text editor is wonderful when I'm typing a memo and want different formatting. However, when I'm typing a query, I'll use vi or Notepad on Windows, because I'm just copying and pasting text, and don't need anything else.

Also, being a DBA and doing some systems work, most of the stuff I do involves "log into blah server and do this". So my Windows desktop at work is a web browser and a way for me to login to other systems and do work.

But for most folks, and for my personal stuff, yes, Windows is better than Unix. Personal stuff being creating and editing a podcast, video, blog posts, web browsing, editing books, getting music/podcasts onto my ipod, etc. That stuff would all be a pain in Unix.

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

I think the desktop vs. server is a valuable point. When it works, and when someone has taken the time to create software for it, Unix performs.

But I work with developers who build software for it. These are people who are highly technical, prefer unix, and have worked under it for years if not decades. And I am continually amazed at how much of their time is spent rebuilding file systems, patching drivers, and trying to figure out an unnecessarily arcane syntax in order to perform simple tasks. I couldn't imagine the world we'd have if its advocates had their way, replacing our sales and accounting folks' machines with Linux boxes.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

*nod* The developers at work mostly use Windows, and use an IDE or just plain login to a development box. We have a website, and I can't imagine running the site on the local machine (windows or linux) is really desired behavior. Particularly since the developers all share a development database.....and I can't imagine them running a db on their machines as well.........

Yeah. I was happy about Mac OS X mostly because they put a good UI on a stable OS, and I don't have to reboot every week. I like that I can double-click to install something, but I also don't have to install ssh or deal with an annoying ssh program. It's just ssh.

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

Interesting. At work, we all run local instances of Oracle and jboss, some on WinXP, some Linux, some OSX, all pretty standard laptops. Some of us used to run postgres until some client put in oracle-specific SQL.

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

Hee! See, I don't really hate it, but it always seems to disappoint me. Despite its performance advantages, it still seems like it was cobbled together by amateurs, despite the 40 years of development it's had.

Thankfully, OSX does seem like a good cover to put over it, although you'll know much more about that than I.