Reminiscing Old School Linux 539
t14m4t writes "While the Linux experience has improved dramatically over the years (remember the days of Kernel version 2.0? or even 1.2?), Tech Republic revisits some of the more-fondly-remembered artifacts of the Linux of years past. From the article: 'Of all the admin tools I have used on Linux, the one I thought was the best of the best was linuxconf. From this single interface, you could administer everything — and I mean EVERYTHING — on your Linux box. From the kernel on up, you could take care of anything you needed. With the dumbing down of the Linux operating system (which was actually a necessity for average user acceptance), tools like this have disappeared. It’s too bad. An admin tool like this was ideal for serious administrators and users.'"
Old School (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what? linuxconf? (Score:5, Informative)
Linux conf: http://tinyurl.com/4jfae7f [tinyurl.com]
From wikipedia:
Linuxconf is a configurator for the Linux operating system. It features different user interfaces: a text interface, a web interface and a GTK interface. Currently, most Linux distributions consider it deprecated compared to other tools such as Webmin, the system-config-* tools on Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora, drakconf on Mandriva, YaST on openSUSE and so on. Linuxconf was deprecated from Red Hat Linux in version 7.1 in April 2001.
I started using Linux around Kernel 0.96 or so (Score:4, Informative)
I downloaded the boot & root FLOPPIES and that's how I got online with Linux back in 1992
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux/browse_thread/thread/3e0f1f1f1e33e1fe/a4f297acaa54597e?hl=en&q=dzubin+linux#a4f297acaa54597e [google.com]
Re:Linuxconf (Score:4, Informative)
And that's what will keep Linux competitive--the ability to meet novice computer users alongside having the power and the efficiency for die-hard CLI lovers.
Don't worry. linuxconf is every bit as capable as vi of emacs with regards to fucking up your fresh linux install. It's the user, not the interface, who makes the mistakes.
People have bad memories.. (Score:4, Informative)
Linuxconf was cool, but it had some major holes. I'm here to tell you that Yast by the nature of having far more modules, is a _MUCH_ better solution.
Dumbing down makes higher complexity (Score:5, Informative)
Command-line tools usually have very well-documented configuration files, and even when they break, debugging is relatively easy.
Now we often have configuration files (e.g. font configuration and internal stuff used by many GUI applications) spread over many poorly-documented locations. If the GUI is not enough or is buggy, which is often the case, it is quite hard to diagnose the issue even for an experienced user like me.
After all, it usually takes much more work to design and program an acceptable GUI than a CLI with similar usability, at least for frequently-used software and users who can either type fast or do simple scripting. Developer time is scarce, so GUI tools are bound to lag behind in features, stability, usability, etc., and the world is complicated enough that a lot of effort is still needed to make things work at all.
Re:Pity about the skills decline (Score:5, Informative)
I cut my teeth on Slackware 3.5
What exactly is "I cut my teeth on"? Consider: is there any normal course of action in the business of mankind during which a person willingly cuts their teeth? We have these fantastical horror stories about warriors in ancient barbarian tribes filing their teeth for the purpose of rending and tearing the enemy to pieces and appearing ferocious. Do you really believe that? By the time mankind is able to fashion metal weaponry there is really no purpose for filing teeth, if ever there was.
I can't tell if you're wildly off base on purpose or not, so I'll provide a counter-example: Consider a small child. When born, it has no teeth, and when the teeth start to develop and grow in, what do they do? They cut through the gums, so to speak. So, "cutting teeth" is something that someone does when they're very young, or just starting out (as in, just starting out in life). Hence, "cutting one's teeth" has become roughly analogous to the early skills learned when starting any new endeavor.
Re:"Dumbing Up" (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think you understand what computer science is. Hint: it's not about writing software.
Yes, PowerShell (Score:5, Informative)
Actually leaves bash in the dust. More consistent, more composable, more robust. Extensibility which reaches beyond creating new text-parsing or text-producing commands to allows the very same command patterns to be re-used from within program logic. My sig is a one-line (121 chars IIRC) improved slashdot reader (see if you can tell how it is improved).