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Every time I've touched BSD I screamed in Agony. It usually has non-working vi (beeping at the sight of arrow keys), ancient shell, colourless ls and other com

Every time I've touched BSD I screamed in Agony. It usually has non-working vi (beeping at the sight of arrow keys), ancient shell, colourless ls and other commands lacking about every other key I throw into them. I understand that BSD has traditions to do exactly that that you will now defend, but those traditions are not unlike muslim africa that tell them to circumcise young girls or kill for blasphemy. Traditions are baaad, mkay? Not gonna get any new users with traditions. Admit that getting new users is not any of your priority and you lost because of that. Technically BSDs were always interesting, but you can't bring yourself to use this awkward tool.

how_gauche 14y ago
PLEASE tell me you didn't just compare monochrome output from "ls" with female genital mutilation. Please.
- koide 14y ago
  No, he made an analogy relating the reason to have monochrome ls and ancient vi/bash in BSD to the reason female genital mutilation occurs. Not exactly classy, arguable, but not out of the line either.
meaty 14y ago
I've never experienced any of these problems. vi always works for me and has done since about 1997. The shell is usually a bourne derivative - no problems there. Colours - you really don't need these in ls. Coloured "ls" is one of those things that is absolutely entirely useless if you actually know how to use ls. I find all BSD derivatives to be professionally documented, extremely reliable and with very few hidden surprises. Compared to digging through GNU info and the utter bloat that most of the GNU toolchain has become[1] and favourite system tool dependency hell replacement of the hour (upstart, udev, dbus etc) it's absolute bliss. [1] *BSD distributions are all slowly phasing out GNU toolchain due to these problems.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Documentation will be extra nice if I could bring myself to actually use BSDs, which I can't. You're lucky, vi didn't work for me. Perhaps my terminal is to blame, but it works with Linux.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Coloured "ls" is one of those things that is absolutely entirely useless if you actually know how to use ls. Knowing how to use non-colored ls is way down my priority list now that colored ls is widely available, much the same way learning more about ed is not a high priority for me. > GNU info GNU info is much more useful than man pages, which are, at best, memory aides for people who already know the software and, at worst, confusing masses of trivia that beg to be broken up into multiple pages. > bloat In my experience, 'bloat' can be defined as "any feature I'm not using at the moment" or, if I'm feeling cranky, "any feature that I feel allows people stupider than me to be productive using my favorite tool". It is a snarl term of the first water, with no value except to express a negative emotion.
  - cturner 14y ago
    Knowing how to use non-colored ls is way down my priority list now that colored ls is widely available Fluency with permissions is fundamental knowledge for a competent unix operator. How many times have you worked with someone who doesn't really get it, but works around it by running everything as root or marking everything as 777? Fluency with permission goes hand-in-hand with habitual use of the long-list usage of ls. And if you do that, colours give you nothing. (although they do look pretty, and that's not a bad thing, and I leave them on for some configurations) GNU info is much more useful than man pages, which are, at best, memory aides for people who already know the software and, at worst, confusing masses of trivia that beg to be broken up into multiple pages. That may be true on linux, but not universal. A clear advantages to BSD is that tooling man pages are produced by a single team. They're more consistent and generally of a higher quality than on linux. In addition, tools tend to do one and only one thing, which promotes use of pipes and scripts rather than obscure tool features.
deleted 14y ago
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how_gauche 14y ago

PLEASE tell me you didn't just compare monochrome output from "ls" with female genital mutilation. Please.

koide 14y ago
No, he made an analogy relating the reason to have monochrome ls and ancient vi/bash in BSD to the reason female genital mutilation occurs. Not exactly classy, arguable, but not out of the line either.

meaty 14y ago

I've never experienced any of these problems. vi always works for me and has done since about 1997. The shell is usually a bourne derivative - no problems there. Colours - you really don't need these in ls. Coloured "ls" is one of those things that is absolutely entirely useless if you actually know how to use ls. I find all BSD derivatives to be professionally documented, extremely reliable and with very few hidden surprises. Compared to digging through GNU info and the utter bloat that most of the GNU toolchain has become[1] and favourite system tool dependency hell replacement of the hour (upstart, udev, dbus etc) it's absolute bliss. [1] *BSD distributions are all slowly phasing out GNU toolchain due to these problems.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
Documentation will be extra nice if I could bring myself to actually use BSDs, which I can't. You're lucky, vi didn't work for me. Perhaps my terminal is to blame, but it works with Linux.
derleth 14y ago
> Coloured "ls" is one of those things that is absolutely entirely useless if you actually know how to use ls. Knowing how to use non-colored ls is way down my priority list now that colored ls is widely available, much the same way learning more about ed is not a high priority for me. > GNU info GNU info is much more useful than man pages, which are, at best, memory aides for people who already know the software and, at worst, confusing masses of trivia that beg to be broken up into multiple pages. > bloat In my experience, 'bloat' can be defined as "any feature I'm not using at the moment" or, if I'm feeling cranky, "any feature that I feel allows people stupider than me to be productive using my favorite tool". It is a snarl term of the first water, with no value except to express a negative emotion.
- cturner 14y ago
  Knowing how to use non-colored ls is way down my priority list now that colored ls is widely available Fluency with permissions is fundamental knowledge for a competent unix operator. How many times have you worked with someone who doesn't really get it, but works around it by running everything as root or marking everything as 777? Fluency with permission goes hand-in-hand with habitual use of the long-list usage of ls. And if you do that, colours give you nothing. (although they do look pretty, and that's not a bad thing, and I leave them on for some configurations) GNU info is much more useful than man pages, which are, at best, memory aides for people who already know the software and, at worst, confusing masses of trivia that beg to be broken up into multiple pages. That may be true on linux, but not universal. A clear advantages to BSD is that tooling man pages are produced by a single team. They're more consistent and generally of a higher quality than on linux. In addition, tools tend to do one and only one thing, which promotes use of pipes and scripts rather than obscure tool features.

deleted 14y ago

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