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So are you saying there is no widespread, well-designed system in any area or industry? Or are you saying there's no widespread, well-designed system in IT? O

So are you saying there is no widespread, well-designed system in any area or industry? Or are you saying there's no widespread, well-designed system in IT? Or are you saying there could not be a widespread, well-designed system to fill Unix's niche? And if so, what's so delicately special about Unix's niche that it evades and/or resists a well-designed substitute? I'm genuinely curious, as I often wonder why no one is in the business of coming up with a better, simpler server OS. (I'm oversimplifying Unix here since that's the only role I care about, plus I believe, as Unix does, in "do one thing and do it well", which is ironic coming from a system that tries to be all things for all people.)

gcb0 12y ago
Read his comment again. It is impossible to have one system spanning several industries/markets/niches/etc and still be consistent. Yeah freebsd is widely used in it. But it doesn't have to support webcams, input tablets, printers (oh god, printers), games, etc...
- innguest 12y ago
  I reread it and I don't see where you're coming from. I agree with your impossibility statement; that's why I said it's ironic that Unix tries to be all things for all people, despite its philosophy. And why is FreeBSD it? Is there a quick, convincing pamphlet that can help answer this question? I keep hearing it but have never seen the reasons distilled, other than "it's more secure".
- ketralnis 12y ago
  > But it doesn't have to support webcams, input tablets, printers (oh god, printers), games, etc... I don't think I follow. There are very few things that you can do in Linux that you can't in FreeBSD. If you SSH'd into a FreeBSD system, you might not even notice that it's not Linux until you tried to do something system-level like install some software or change your IP address. To your examples, I have used a webcam and printer and played games on FreeBSD. But to that end, FreeBSD still has the whole mess of tools that Linux has (do we really need sed and awk and perl and...). It's much more accurate to call FreeBSD "unix" than it is Linux. In fact, this Unix Haters Handbook is dated before widespread popularity of Linux. So while FreeSBD may be better "designed" as a cohesive system than Linux, it's still guilty of every single criticism in this article, and is even more likely to be the intended target of that criticism. I know it's tempting to say "everything would be better if we all used this thing over there", but that thing over there that you think solves all of your problems probably doesn't exist.
  - fzltrp 12y ago
    > [FreeBSD]'s still guilty of every single criticism in this article s/'s/ was/ I don't think that _every_ criticism in this book is still valid, far from it. Besides, Linux and *BSD ecosystems share a lot, actually only the kernel/libc points (if any) could be relevant for one system and not the others.

gcb0 12y ago

Read his comment again. It is impossible to have one system spanning several industries/markets/niches/etc and still be consistent. Yeah freebsd is widely used in it. But it doesn't have to support webcams, input tablets, printers (oh god, printers), games, etc...

innguest 12y ago
I reread it and I don't see where you're coming from. I agree with your impossibility statement; that's why I said it's ironic that Unix tries to be all things for all people, despite its philosophy. And why is FreeBSD it? Is there a quick, convincing pamphlet that can help answer this question? I keep hearing it but have never seen the reasons distilled, other than "it's more secure".
ketralnis 12y ago
> But it doesn't have to support webcams, input tablets, printers (oh god, printers), games, etc... I don't think I follow. There are very few things that you can do in Linux that you can't in FreeBSD. If you SSH'd into a FreeBSD system, you might not even notice that it's not Linux until you tried to do something system-level like install some software or change your IP address. To your examples, I have used a webcam and printer and played games on FreeBSD. But to that end, FreeBSD still has the whole mess of tools that Linux has (do we really need sed and awk and perl and...). It's much more accurate to call FreeBSD "unix" than it is Linux. In fact, this Unix Haters Handbook is dated before widespread popularity of Linux. So while FreeSBD may be better "designed" as a cohesive system than Linux, it's still guilty of every single criticism in this article, and is even more likely to be the intended target of that criticism. I know it's tempting to say "everything would be better if we all used this thing over there", but that thing over there that you think solves all of your problems probably doesn't exist.
- fzltrp 12y ago
  > [FreeBSD]'s still guilty of every single criticism in this article s/'s/ was/ I don't think that _every_ criticism in this book is still valid, far from it. Besides, Linux and *BSD ecosystems share a lot, actually only the kernel/libc points (if any) could be relevant for one system and not the others.