cat(1)'s versatility is mostly a side effect of the essential nature of file descriptors, which I believe is good. Criticisms of command, standard library and

cat(1)'s versatility is mostly a side effect of the essential nature of file descriptors, which I believe is good. Criticisms of command, standard library and FHS naming are evidently quite ancient. I have little sympathy for them, given that other mainstream systems are usually worse. However, one can see GoboLinux and NixOS for alternative takes. I also will grant that creat(2) is embarrassing. Modern versions of rm(1) (or at least GNU rm and I believe Solaris rm, as well) have a default policy of refusing certain glob patterns without explicit approval so as to prevent user error. I do not favor this much in principle, but this criticism is now dated. That you aren't asked if you're sure every time you do an operation that is potentially dangerous (which can be so many things) can be seen as a good thing. Configuring your shell isn't particularly elegant, though understanding general distinctions like sessions isn't all that difficult. ed(1) is seldom used these days, obviously. The functionality of fgrep(1) and egrep(1) have largely been merged into more monolithic grep(1) implementations, though the former two remain as aliases. Overall, modern Unix-like UIs are actually pretty good as far as these things go. It could be much better, but whenever people try to fix things they're quite ironically met with resistance from people too conformant to the status quo, and the better ways are inevitably relegated to either academic curiosities or cult/heterodox practices that are espoused by a loyal few. On the other hand, whenever a new solution does make it, it's rarely truly better because it's also based on some paradigm that is relatively well ingrained in the computing popular culture. When someone criticizes the FHS these days, it's almost always a concealed way of saying "Why isn't this like the directory structure of Windows or OS X?", rather than any interest in having the most ergonomic solution.