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Some of my primary beefs with Unix, stated more concisely than the rambling article: 1) Text is for humans, and is generally incomprehensible to machines. Enc

Some of my primary beefs with Unix, stated more concisely than the rambling article: 1) Text is for humans, and is generally incomprehensible to machines. Encodings, arbitrary config file formats, terminals, etc, are all piles of thoughtless one-off hacks. It's a horrible substrate for compositing software functionality, through either pipes or files. 2) Hierarchical directory structures quickly become insufficient. 3) The filesystem permission model is way too coarse grained. 4) C is a systems/driver/low-level language, not a reasonable user-level application or utility language.

unethical_ban 10y ago
To 1: Computers are for humans. I like my configurations to be accessible to me, as well as my logs.
- white-flame 10y ago
  Who gets to decide what "accessible" means? Too many unix programs have their own completely ad-hoc printer and parser for config files, which have different assumptions. Some allow comma-separated entries in values. Some space or tabs are significant. Varying comment characters. Varying support for multi-line entries. Varying support for quoted strings. Varying support for unicode. Some are key/value, some are section based. Arbitrary special punctuation abounds. It's a fundamental, unstandardized mess. From the perspective of just a single program, then fine, it does what it needs to and its individual text formats are human-understandable, and its code is quickly banged together to do what it needs with it. From an ecosystem perspective, it's a complete failure of usability and _interoperability_, which is the entire point of Unix philosophy in the first place! Humans aren't the only ones reading & writing config files: Software needs to do it, too, be it applications or automation scripts. Again, text is a horrible substrate for compositing software functionality.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Easy: a tool comes with it yo do that or it's a standard, data format you view with existing tool. You even get closer to UNIX philosophy of one app per task that way given the mess ad-hoc text leads to.
greenhouse_gas 10y ago
1. Binary formats are great, until they break. I would take plain strings configuration over Win95 registry any day. Actually, I'd take plain text conf over Win10 registry any day also. How do you transfer your (arbitrary) program settings from one computer to another? I can tell you how on Unix. How would you on windows? 2. / based filesystems are head and shoulders better than Windows. Why should moving a directory from my internal hard drive to a SSD over USB change my location? On Unix I can keep my home directory (or Program Files) on a NFS share, SMB share or SSD harddrive. Can I do the same on Windows? 3. It is, which is why SELinux was invented. But that's to hard, so no one uses it. 4. All major OSs (Both Unix/Linux and Windows) are C or C++ based. But here's something interesting: in the 90s, it was considered "advanced" to have the GUI an inherent part of the OS, rather than being just another program. Windows and Plan9 did that. Yet, it turned out that admining a system without a 1st class command line is a pain, so windows is rolling back with Power shell. Maybe Windows will one day make their Server headless, and where you can do full sysadmining through SSH
- jcranmer 10y ago
  > Actually, I'd take plain text conf over Win10 registry any day also. How do you transfer your (arbitrary) program settings from one computer to another? I can tell you how on Unix. How would you on windows? Your personal registry settings are stored in %USERPROFILE%\ntuser.dat, and global registry trees are various files under %SystemRoot\System32\Config. Actually, in many ways, Windows makes its organization system much easier to find profile data to copy than Unix-based systems. Most programs install configurations either in their install folder (C:\Program Files\<Product Name>) or in per-user data (C:\Users\<user>\Application Data\<Product Name>). In Unix, you might have a mix between dot folders (with some things choosing to use .<name> while others might settle for .config/<name>), as well as having to guess if various config files are under /etc/<product>, /usr/lib/<product>, /usr/share/<product>, or maybe even weird places like somewhere under /var or /opt. > On Unix I can keep my home directory (or Program Files) on a NFS share, SMB share or SSD harddrive. Can I do the same on Windows? Yep, you can remap where your user's home profile is. You can even distinguish between files that should be replicated across network shares and files that should not be replicated in per-user storage (AppData\Roaming versus AppData\Local).

unethical_ban 10y ago

To 1: Computers are for humans. I like my configurations to be accessible to me, as well as my logs.

white-flame 10y ago
Who gets to decide what "accessible" means? Too many unix programs have their own completely ad-hoc printer and parser for config files, which have different assumptions. Some allow comma-separated entries in values. Some space or tabs are significant. Varying comment characters. Varying support for multi-line entries. Varying support for quoted strings. Varying support for unicode. Some are key/value, some are section based. Arbitrary special punctuation abounds. It's a fundamental, unstandardized mess. From the perspective of just a single program, then fine, it does what it needs to and its individual text formats are human-understandable, and its code is quickly banged together to do what it needs with it. From an ecosystem perspective, it's a complete failure of usability and _interoperability_, which is the entire point of Unix philosophy in the first place! Humans aren't the only ones reading & writing config files: Software needs to do it, too, be it applications or automation scripts. Again, text is a horrible substrate for compositing software functionality.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Easy: a tool comes with it yo do that or it's a standard, data format you view with existing tool. You even get closer to UNIX philosophy of one app per task that way given the mess ad-hoc text leads to.

greenhouse_gas 10y ago

1. Binary formats are great, until they break. I would take plain strings configuration over Win95 registry any day. Actually, I'd take plain text conf over Win10 registry any day also. How do you transfer your (arbitrary) program settings from one computer to another? I can tell you how on Unix. How would you on windows? 2. / based filesystems are head and shoulders better than Windows. Why should moving a directory from my internal hard drive to a SSD over USB change my location? On Unix I can keep my home directory (or Program Files) on a NFS share, SMB share or SSD harddrive. Can I do the same on Windows? 3. It is, which is why SELinux was invented. But that's to hard, so no one uses it. 4. All major OSs (Both Unix/Linux and Windows) are C or C++ based. But here's something interesting: in the 90s, it was considered "advanced" to have the GUI an inherent part of the OS, rather than being just another program. Windows and Plan9 did that. Yet, it turned out that admining a system without a 1st class command line is a pain, so windows is rolling back with Power shell. Maybe Windows will one day make their Server headless, and where you can do full sysadmining through SSH

jcranmer 10y ago
> Actually, I'd take plain text conf over Win10 registry any day also. How do you transfer your (arbitrary) program settings from one computer to another? I can tell you how on Unix. How would you on windows? Your personal registry settings are stored in %USERPROFILE%\ntuser.dat, and global registry trees are various files under %SystemRoot\System32\Config. Actually, in many ways, Windows makes its organization system much easier to find profile data to copy than Unix-based systems. Most programs install configurations either in their install folder (C:\Program Files\<Product Name>) or in per-user data (C:\Users\<user>\Application Data\<Product Name>). In Unix, you might have a mix between dot folders (with some things choosing to use .<name> while others might settle for .config/<name>), as well as having to guess if various config files are under /etc/<product>, /usr/lib/<product>, /usr/share/<product>, or maybe even weird places like somewhere under /var or /opt. > On Unix I can keep my home directory (or Program Files) on a NFS share, SMB share or SSD harddrive. Can I do the same on Windows? Yep, you can remap where your user's home profile is. You can even distinguish between files that should be replicated across network shares and files that should not be replicated in per-user storage (AppData\Roaming versus AppData\Local).