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I think the problem is that Linux developers started abusing the Unix Philosophy to the point that you had to know about a lot of different programs in order to

I think the problem is that Linux developers started abusing the Unix Philosophy to the point that you had to know about a lot of different programs in order to be productive - Sometimes, it's much more convenient if one program can do everything that you want it to do out of the box (it requires less understanding of the system). The Unix philosophy is essentially the opposite of the Apple philosophy. It gives you flexibility and composability at the cost of simplicity and the overall experience. The optimal solution tends to be somewhere in-between. If you look at Linux, it's actually a monolithic system (which goes against the Unix philosophy); the popularity of Linux is in itself proof that people do want a single cohesive product - If the Unix philosophy was the best approach, we'd all be using Minix by now.

pmoriarty 10y ago
I didn't find MacOS to be any simpler than newbie-oriented Linux distros like Mint and Ubuntu. It was just filled with a ton of proprietary, bastardized, closed-source garbage and limits that made it more difficult for power users to understand and effectively manage the system.
- jondubois 10y ago
  To be fair Linux distros have improved a LOT in the past 5 years. When I first used Ubuntu many years ago, you couldn't do anything without the command line. Installing software was a pain (I had tons of problem with Ubuntu Software Center and it never seemed to work). I use Ubuntu (Gnome) these days. The only thing I miss from Windows is Windows Explorer. Nautilus just doesn't cut it in my opinion; I always end up browsing the file system with the command line. That said, I still prefer Nautilus over OSX's Finder.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    "Installing software was a mess." Of all the things to complain about in Linux, you choose the one thing that Mac OS and Windows still don't have right, and Linux had pretty good even back then?
    - jondubois 10y ago
      Installation on Windows was always much easier; all programs had a relatively consistent UI wizard that stepped you through the installation process. Installing software from disks on Windows was really convenient (and disks where the real deal back then). The fact that Linux relied on people to install stuff with the command line was a massive oversight. UIs are just way more intuitive than shell commands.
      - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
        Windows has always been fine for _installing_ software. It's when you go to uninstall or upgrade it that you realize what a mess it is.
      - danielweber 10y ago
        It's not using the command line that sucks about installing software. It's that there are so many different standards for installing software, overlapping in sometimes conflicting ways.
      - metaobject 10y ago
        Perhaps the issue when comparing Windows and Linux is more one of "dependency management" than just merely installing applications or libraries? Although I've had issues with package managers screwing up dependencies in the past, it hasn't happened in a while and when it would have happened I was warned beforehand.
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        "Installation on Windows was always much easier" I've rarely disagreed with something said on HN so strongly (at least among things that, in the grand scheme of things, really don't matter that much, but they matter a lot to my personal experience). "The fact that Linux relied on people to install stuff with the command line was a massive oversight. UIs are just way more intuitive than shell commands." This has never been true in the past 12 years. You have to go back even further to find a time when there weren't multiple GUIs for the leading package managers. And, for at least the past decade, the core GUI experience on every major Linux distro has had some sort of "Install Software" user interface that was super easy and provided search and the like. There's lots of things Linux got wrong (and some that it still gets wrong) that Windows or macOS got right. Software installation really just isn't one of them, IMHO. It's the thing I miss most when I have to work on Windows or macOS, and I miss it constantly...like multiple times a day. A good package manager is among the greatest time savers and greatest sources of comfort (am I up to date? do I have this installed already? which version? where are the config files? where are the docs? etc.) when I use any system, particularly one I haven't seen in a while. I just really love a good package manager, and Linux has several. Windows and macOS have none (because if the entire OS didn't come from a package manager, it's useless...you can't know what's going on by querying the package manager, if the package manager only installed a tiny percentage of the code on the system). So, even though there's choco on Windows and Homebrew (shudder...) on macOS, they are broken from the get-go because they are, by necessity, their own tiny little part of the system with little awareness or control over the OS itself.
Arizhel 10y ago
Linux is not a monolithic system. It has a monolithic (sorta) kernel. There's a big difference. You're arguing monolithic kernels vs. microkernels. Microkernels didn't even exist when UNIX was invented, so no, they are not representative of "Unix philosophy". "Unix philosophy" is merely about the user-space tools you use to do stuff, since back in 1970 all they had was the shell (sh), and various tools like grep, ed, awk, etc., to do things. It's entirely possible to have a microkernel with a Unix-like system; HURD attempts this. Microkernel vs. monolithic is an entirely separate issue.
- sedachv 10y ago
  I think the parent poster is talking about the userspace. A Linux distribution like Ubuntu that uses systemd, GNOME, and NetworkManager is certainly monolithic compared to Slackware circa 1999. NetworkManager alone is a pile of garbage that goes completely against Unix networking conventions, for IMO no good reasons. OpenBSD's approach to integrating WiFi and other network interfaces into the existing BSD network management commands is so much better.
7952 10y ago
Large monolithic apps can be an ecosystem in their own right that is broadly comparable to an OS. And it is common to find apps that adopt Unix philosophy out of necessity within the ecosystem. This is not obvious to an outsider, and requires an understanding of the domain. A good example is ArcGIS which on the surface is ridiculously monolithic. But within the toolbox function are several hundred programs that do only one thing and are composable. This approach is also seen in video or image editing workflows where a user works with a particular set of tools. The main difference is that the programs use a types system that is appropriate to the domain rather than just text. The OS only really exposes an interface for working with OS level objects. That sometimes aligns to a workflow but not always. And we should not expect disciplines to align their techniques to OS level objects if that is not a good fit for the actual domain.

pmoriarty 10y ago

I didn't find MacOS to be any simpler than newbie-oriented Linux distros like Mint and Ubuntu. It was just filled with a ton of proprietary, bastardized, closed-source garbage and limits that made it more difficult for power users to understand and effectively manage the system.

jondubois 10y ago
To be fair Linux distros have improved a LOT in the past 5 years. When I first used Ubuntu many years ago, you couldn't do anything without the command line. Installing software was a pain (I had tons of problem with Ubuntu Software Center and it never seemed to work). I use Ubuntu (Gnome) these days. The only thing I miss from Windows is Windows Explorer. Nautilus just doesn't cut it in my opinion; I always end up browsing the file system with the command line. That said, I still prefer Nautilus over OSX's Finder.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  "Installing software was a mess." Of all the things to complain about in Linux, you choose the one thing that Mac OS and Windows still don't have right, and Linux had pretty good even back then?
  - jondubois 10y ago
    Installation on Windows was always much easier; all programs had a relatively consistent UI wizard that stepped you through the installation process. Installing software from disks on Windows was really convenient (and disks where the real deal back then). The fact that Linux relied on people to install stuff with the command line was a massive oversight. UIs are just way more intuitive than shell commands.
    - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      Windows has always been fine for _installing_ software. It's when you go to uninstall or upgrade it that you realize what a mess it is.
    - danielweber 10y ago
      It's not using the command line that sucks about installing software. It's that there are so many different standards for installing software, overlapping in sometimes conflicting ways.
    - metaobject 10y ago
      Perhaps the issue when comparing Windows and Linux is more one of "dependency management" than just merely installing applications or libraries? Although I've had issues with package managers screwing up dependencies in the past, it hasn't happened in a while and when it would have happened I was warned beforehand.
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      "Installation on Windows was always much easier" I've rarely disagreed with something said on HN so strongly (at least among things that, in the grand scheme of things, really don't matter that much, but they matter a lot to my personal experience). "The fact that Linux relied on people to install stuff with the command line was a massive oversight. UIs are just way more intuitive than shell commands." This has never been true in the past 12 years. You have to go back even further to find a time when there weren't multiple GUIs for the leading package managers. And, for at least the past decade, the core GUI experience on every major Linux distro has had some sort of "Install Software" user interface that was super easy and provided search and the like. There's lots of things Linux got wrong (and some that it still gets wrong) that Windows or macOS got right. Software installation really just isn't one of them, IMHO. It's the thing I miss most when I have to work on Windows or macOS, and I miss it constantly...like multiple times a day. A good package manager is among the greatest time savers and greatest sources of comfort (am I up to date? do I have this installed already? which version? where are the config files? where are the docs? etc.) when I use any system, particularly one I haven't seen in a while. I just really love a good package manager, and Linux has several. Windows and macOS have none (because if the entire OS didn't come from a package manager, it's useless...you can't know what's going on by querying the package manager, if the package manager only installed a tiny percentage of the code on the system). So, even though there's choco on Windows and Homebrew (shudder...) on macOS, they are broken from the get-go because they are, by necessity, their own tiny little part of the system with little awareness or control over the OS itself.

Arizhel 10y ago

Linux is not a monolithic system. It has a monolithic (sorta) kernel. There's a big difference. You're arguing monolithic kernels vs. microkernels. Microkernels didn't even exist when UNIX was invented, so no, they are not representative of "Unix philosophy". "Unix philosophy" is merely about the user-space tools you use to do stuff, since back in 1970 all they had was the shell (sh), and various tools like grep, ed, awk, etc., to do things. It's entirely possible to have a microkernel with a Unix-like system; HURD attempts this. Microkernel vs. monolithic is an entirely separate issue.

sedachv 10y ago
I think the parent poster is talking about the userspace. A Linux distribution like Ubuntu that uses systemd, GNOME, and NetworkManager is certainly monolithic compared to Slackware circa 1999. NetworkManager alone is a pile of garbage that goes completely against Unix networking conventions, for IMO no good reasons. OpenBSD's approach to integrating WiFi and other network interfaces into the existing BSD network management commands is so much better.

7952 10y ago

Large monolithic apps can be an ecosystem in their own right that is broadly comparable to an OS. And it is common to find apps that adopt Unix philosophy out of necessity within the ecosystem. This is not obvious to an outsider, and requires an understanding of the domain. A good example is ArcGIS which on the surface is ridiculously monolithic. But within the toolbox function are several hundred programs that do only one thing and are composable. This approach is also seen in video or image editing workflows where a user works with a particular set of tools. The main difference is that the programs use a types system that is appropriate to the domain rather than just text. The OS only really exposes an interface for working with OS level objects. That sometimes aligns to a workflow but not always. And we should not expect disciplines to align their techniques to OS level objects if that is not a good fit for the actual domain.