How did *nix become an inside joke?

[FrankenGraphics]

Light-hearted tounge in cheek.

Following the 7th reply in this thread, and since i recently had to take the plunge and crash-course myself in the *nix console after a simple patch for a client misfired, i've come to enjoy/feel a bit of horror how using the console sometimes feel like an inside joke.

to read a txt, you learn to use cat because that's the quickest way. But to understand why it happens at all you'll need to learn that it's because you didn't type an output, so it sends the data to stdout (monitor). Then, you learn piping and feel confident using cat file | more - that's when your partner tells you to use cat file | less, because "less is more".

All the time not questioning why it is called cat. Then you learn it's conCATenate, but since you didn't type anything to concatenate with, it just sends the data directly to the output.

If that's the way it's going to be, no wonder public administration, schools and other institutions tends to cling to microsoft/apple despite it costing them sweet millions

[tepples]

The introduction to the Jargon File might help you appreciate the style of humor that goes into programmer slang.

The pager (text viewer) that you're referring to is called "less" because "more" was one-directional, and "less" lets you scroll back to earlier portions.

And cat one_file.txt | less is what the comp.unix.shell newsgroup called a "useless use of cat", when less one_file.txt already works.

"UN*X" and "*nix" are attempts to say "operating systems that usefully approximate a UNIX system's behavior but aren't necessarily licensed under the UNIX brand". The one I use most often is "*n?x", which is a shell glob pattern that matches "unix" and "linux".

[FrankenGraphics]

hah - so cat being the "quickest way" is really the difference of one letter at the cost of not being able to properly view larger texts. This is getting better and better

[gauauu]

I'ts just like using vim -- really powerful, and incredibly unobvious and unintuitive. And like you said, it's no wonder that normal people don't want to use it.

That said, it's still worth learning if you are interested in development or sysadmin tasks.

[Dwedit]

I just use mcedit (midnight commander text editor)

[FrankenGraphics]

An acquintance at the installation site passed me by just as the monitor listed files by size (something an office worker might aswell do on windows on a daily basis; at least by date).

Words exchanged:
-So this is your world?
-I can see the matrix now.

[calima]

Laziness is a virtue. And after all, typing "ls" is 33% faster than typing "dir".

[Gilbert]

I used to type "CATALOG" in APPLE DOS to get a disk's file listing and I think in PRODOS you could just type "CAT" too(I'm very unfamiliar with PRODOS but just checked, "CAT" is for 40 column listing whereas "CATALOG" is for 80 column listing).

[lamejoke]
Now I have enough reason to not use *nix as it is confusing as hell to use "CAT" to do other things than showing a folder/disk's listing or jumping onto higher and higher place at home every day and pushing stuff to crash fall on the ground.
[/lamejoke]

[Oziphantom]

Yeah but Apple is just NIX with glossy paint.. well its BSD which is NIX but with a holy war

the C128 has CATALOG but I could never get it right as a kid and would type CATALOGUE as that is how you spell it

BASIC was the best though ? for print, Letter + (shift) next letter for basically every command. My BASIC hacked assembler was A(shift S) which is A❤ on a C64

Have you seen the "Why Linux sucks" videos, they are good at making a joke from Linux, although most of the joke is how he has complained about the same things for 20 years

You should get an old green phosphor crt to complete the matrix look.

[pubby]

Daily reminder that ed is the standard text editor.

[whicker]

Eunuchs was always a joke. Even the name.

Try updating python to the latest version on a Raspberry Pi (python arguably being the reason for its existence).
Experience the dependency hell that is Linux, and the weasel reasons for it.

Sure thing, all these little programs that do one thing well (oh but by the way that recursively rely on a bunch of other little programs) is a great idea (/sarcasm).

Sure thing, source code is included, but muwahahaha, you noobs just try and compile it with this sinister makefile. What, why haven't you modified your configuration files by hand the same way I have them? What? The license for the library of this otherwise "free software" restricts me from using it in commercial software that'll sell to like 30 people because of the author's personal political beliefs, and the author is either non-reachable or being a cheeky asshat by demanding "one billion dollars"? And the remedy is "write it yourself". Yeah, but no thanks.

And there are other independent operating systems out there, but still rife with stupid humor. Oh "Plan 9", that sounds like a winner. Already seeking infamous failure by just the name. Why not the Hindenburg OS, Titanic Edition, version I-85 (soon to be I-94).

[Myask]

edlin vs ed holy war go

[tepples]

What? The license for the library of this otherwise "free software" restricts me from using it in commercial software that'll sell to like 30 people because of the author's personal political beliefs

"Commercial"? Nothing in a free software license prohibits distributing copies for a fee. Back in the dial-up era, it used to be common to get a GNU/Linux CD based on Red Hat (before it was called Fedora) bundled with books like Linux for Dummies. All a copyleft license does is keep you from adding restrictions on those 30 people. And FreeBSD doesn't even have that; significant parts of it are used in the heavily locked down operating systems iOS (iPod touch, iPhone, iPad) and Orbis (PlayStation 4).

[Myask]

…restrictions like preventing person 1 from giving persons 2-30 copies for less than you were charging or gratis, in a medium where it costs pennies to produce extra copies but thousands to make the first.

Sure, they argue that it doesn't prohibit you charging money, but it's easy to see that you're much less likely, lacking the exclusive Right to [your] Writings and Discoveries, to be able to recoup your costs, for every customer you get is instantly a competitor without comparable barrier to entry (buying a computer and a copy of your software costs less than creating software).

Not that I'm saying free software is bad, just that…there are good reasons for wanting exclusive copyright to something you create.

[lidnariq]

That argument works equally well in favor of the original author who licensed their library under the GPL2...

The entire stupid arguments about "what license is free-ere-rer-errerrrrrr" seems to boil down to English not have a linguistic primitive that distinguishes between Free-as-in-beer (where the parsing of "what do you mean I can't sell this can of beer to a 3rd party?" is an obvious response) and Preserving-the-rights-of-the-final-recipient.

Remember that the GPL was specifically invented when RMS found a bug in a printer, and could no longer get the source code to the (newer model of) printer such that he could fix the bug. Everything else follows.