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

[unsound.livejournal.com]

It's against my better judgement to engage in anything so close to a debate over platforms and their relative merits, but I would like to respond to this: Unix is not a serious platform for anyone who wants to actually get work done

Your argument is flawed. At best, you could argue that Unix is not a serious platform for *you* to get work done on, or that you've seen others struggle with said platform. One person's effective tool may be useless to another person. I know A person who literally does everything in emacs; while I find this to be a mind boggling choice, it's what works for him and it certainly *does work*. More, it's been a viable and consistent tool for twenty years.

I, too, find Linux to be more suitable for deployment as servers or appliance-like applications rather than as a useful desktop platform, but I also acknowledge that I lack familiarity- I'm aware that many problems I've had using it are the result of a steep learning curve for some versions, and of a difference in paradigm. At the same time, I'm amazed that you've never seen someone kill hours rebuilding a Windows box that's blown up; they can, and do, and often through no obvious mistake on the part of the user. I've seen good practices, in fact - regular installation of software updates - cause a machine to stop functioning completely.

All software has flaws, I'd suggest that you're simply used to the flaws in Windows.

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

It's true that certain people can be proficient under unix. On the other hand, I work with highly technically trained developers who have worked under unix for years, and who enthusiastically advance its universal adoption as a desktop computing platform. And I am amazed when I see how much of their time is spent rebuilding a corrupted file system, patching drivers, and figuring out unnecessarily arcane syntax for performing simple everyday tasks. Even for that highly specialized and motivated population, it doesn't seem like a very effective solution.

And I'm not necessarily a Windows proponent. It does seem stable and interoperable, and mostly usable even by non techies. But it's no panacaea by a long shot. OSX also has its adherents, although I find it pretty unintuitive myself.

What I wish we had was a decent desktop version of VM/SP, which had evolved along with the times. Thirty years ago it had complete virtualization, rock-solid stability, a mostly intuitive command set, what is still the best text and programming editor on the planet, and a forgiving and easy to learn but powerful shell/macro programming language.

Someday maybe we'll get a decent computing platform that's built new from the ground up. But so far any attempt to do so has failed miserably (NeXT, Amiga, OS2...)