4 ms·

Read the manpage. One thing I really dislike about modern UNIXes is their lack of decent manpages in place of standins like --help. I love the BSDs and especi

Read the manpage. One thing I really dislike about modern UNIXes is their lack of decent manpages in place of standins like --help. I love the BSDs and especially OpenBSD for their attention to manpages. It's the main reason why I don't use Linux anymore unless I have to. Adding detailed --help messages would take time away from maintaining manpages, it also presents a duplication of information. If you want to know what the switches do, read the manpage.

0xFFFE 8y ago
Indeed, as an example "ls --help" on Linux prints at least 3 pages of information on stdout. I would rather read top quality man page and have a succinct "-h" message.
atmosx 8y ago
How do you live without docker containers? The fact that docker doesn’t run on BSDs is what drove me away.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  ...the same way the world has managed to survive for decades without Linux containers in general (let alone specific wrappers around that like Docker is)? With OpenBSD specifically, you can get 90% of the way there with chroots, standard process isolation, and a bit of shell scripting to handle deployment automation. Yeah, Docker's cool, but it's really not that hard to run multiple applications/services on the same physical machine while keeping them from clobbering each other or the OS in general (step 1 being to make sure each service/daemon is running under its own minimally-privileged user).
  - toyg 8y ago
    > With OpenBSD specifically, you can get 90% of the way there with chroots, standard process isolation, and a bit of shell scripting This is a classic case of "THAT HackerNews response to Dropbox" [1]. If it's that easy, why isn't there a prepackaged wrapper with simple switches, rather than leaving developers to fight for themselves among piles of custom hacks? The problem is not just deployment, the Docker differentiation is simplification of the development pipeline. OpenBSD should seriously look at their story in that area, because it's one of the few where they could still potentially compete (because Docker is still fundamentally a pile of hacks, and pretty insecure too). Unless, of course, everyone is happy to remain "the little project that could" and crack jokes like the BCHS stack. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - smhenderson 8y ago
      OpenBSD should seriously look at their story in that area, because it's one of the few where they could still potentially compete (because Docker is still fundamentally a pile of hacks, and pretty insecure too). I’m pretty sure the Open BSD developers are completely comfortable with their story. They develop this software for themselves first. If you like it and it’s useful to you you are welcome to it. If not, look elsewhere. That’s been their working philosophy all along and if you ask me that’s what makes it so great to use. Every piece of the system is carefully thought out and organized so it doesn’t suffer from nearly as much feature creep as other systems. And as far as setting up chroit and isolating processes; it’s not hard and sometimes you don’t need someone else to write a script for you when you can do it yourself in 10 steps or less.
      - toyg 8y ago
        > I’m pretty sure the Open BSD developers are completely comfortable with their story. They were pretty comfortable with their patching story -- until enough people complained and lo, syspatch(8) appeared. Beyond the posturing, nobody likes to run a project that nobody else uses; and sometimes even lusers are right. > Every piece of the system is carefully thought out and organized I am not saying they should rush out a crap docker clone, but rather a "carefully thought out and organized" docker alternative. > you can do it yourself in 10 steps or less. It's still 5x the steps you need with docker. As I said, it's about simple reproducibility rather than just isolation. Even if it were easy to write my own docker-compose (and indeed many people argued the same, when docker first emerged, because it actually was little more than shell scripts), having one well-defined set of tools helps tremendously with kickstarting adoption and to avoid reinventing the wheel every few weeks.
        ams6110 8y ago
        I would be surprised if user complaints were the motivation for syspatch. More likely, the author built something he found useful, and contributed it to the project. Most of the time on the openbsd email list, when a "user" suggests a feature or asks for a change to something, the reply is something along the lines of "sounds great, where is your patch?"
- nineteen999 8y ago
  Plenty of people live just fine without docker containers, even in the Linux world.
  - fabioyy 8y ago
    Plenty of people lived just fine without the industrial revolution, scientific method, cellphones, computers, fire...
    - nineteen999 8y ago
      None of which were branded Docker(TM) - https://www.docker.com/legal/trademark-guidelines https://www.docker.com/legal/trademark-guidelines Don't get me wrong, sure it has its uses, but to pretend that Docker(TM) is just as big a leap (or as essential) as any of those things is laughable.
DblPlusUngood 8y ago
> I love the BSDs and especially OpenBSD for their attention to manpages. It's the main reason why I don't use Linux anymore unless I have to. I completely agree. The difference in the quality of manpages between OpenBSD and Linux alone is enough for me to prefer OpenBSD.

0xFFFE 8y ago

Indeed, as an example "ls --help" on Linux prints at least 3 pages of information on stdout. I would rather read top quality man page and have a succinct "-h" message.

atmosx 8y ago

How do you live without docker containers? The fact that docker doesn’t run on BSDs is what drove me away.

yellowapple 8y ago
...the same way the world has managed to survive for decades without Linux containers in general (let alone specific wrappers around that like Docker is)? With OpenBSD specifically, you can get 90% of the way there with chroots, standard process isolation, and a bit of shell scripting to handle deployment automation. Yeah, Docker's cool, but it's really not that hard to run multiple applications/services on the same physical machine while keeping them from clobbering each other or the OS in general (step 1 being to make sure each service/daemon is running under its own minimally-privileged user).
- toyg 8y ago
  > With OpenBSD specifically, you can get 90% of the way there with chroots, standard process isolation, and a bit of shell scripting This is a classic case of "THAT HackerNews response to Dropbox" [1]. If it's that easy, why isn't there a prepackaged wrapper with simple switches, rather than leaving developers to fight for themselves among piles of custom hacks? The problem is not just deployment, the Docker differentiation is simplification of the development pipeline. OpenBSD should seriously look at their story in that area, because it's one of the few where they could still potentially compete (because Docker is still fundamentally a pile of hacks, and pretty insecure too). Unless, of course, everyone is happy to remain "the little project that could" and crack jokes like the BCHS stack. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - smhenderson 8y ago
    OpenBSD should seriously look at their story in that area, because it's one of the few where they could still potentially compete (because Docker is still fundamentally a pile of hacks, and pretty insecure too). I’m pretty sure the Open BSD developers are completely comfortable with their story. They develop this software for themselves first. If you like it and it’s useful to you you are welcome to it. If not, look elsewhere. That’s been their working philosophy all along and if you ask me that’s what makes it so great to use. Every piece of the system is carefully thought out and organized so it doesn’t suffer from nearly as much feature creep as other systems. And as far as setting up chroit and isolating processes; it’s not hard and sometimes you don’t need someone else to write a script for you when you can do it yourself in 10 steps or less.
    - toyg 8y ago
      > I’m pretty sure the Open BSD developers are completely comfortable with their story. They were pretty comfortable with their patching story -- until enough people complained and lo, syspatch(8) appeared. Beyond the posturing, nobody likes to run a project that nobody else uses; and sometimes even lusers are right. > Every piece of the system is carefully thought out and organized I am not saying they should rush out a crap docker clone, but rather a "carefully thought out and organized" docker alternative. > you can do it yourself in 10 steps or less. It's still 5x the steps you need with docker. As I said, it's about simple reproducibility rather than just isolation. Even if it were easy to write my own docker-compose (and indeed many people argued the same, when docker first emerged, because it actually was little more than shell scripts), having one well-defined set of tools helps tremendously with kickstarting adoption and to avoid reinventing the wheel every few weeks.
      - ams6110 8y ago
        I would be surprised if user complaints were the motivation for syspatch. More likely, the author built something he found useful, and contributed it to the project. Most of the time on the openbsd email list, when a "user" suggests a feature or asks for a change to something, the reply is something along the lines of "sounds great, where is your patch?"
nineteen999 8y ago
Plenty of people live just fine without docker containers, even in the Linux world.
- fabioyy 8y ago
  Plenty of people lived just fine without the industrial revolution, scientific method, cellphones, computers, fire...
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    None of which were branded Docker(TM) - https://www.docker.com/legal/trademark-guidelines https://www.docker.com/legal/trademark-guidelines Don't get me wrong, sure it has its uses, but to pretend that Docker(TM) is just as big a leap (or as essential) as any of those things is laughable.

DblPlusUngood 8y ago

> I love the BSDs and especially OpenBSD for their attention to manpages. It's the main reason why I don't use Linux anymore unless I have to. I completely agree. The difference in the quality of manpages between OpenBSD and Linux alone is enough for me to prefer OpenBSD.