I (not) heart *nix
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I have, it's absolutely brilliant! Some of the stories, particularly the bits on X Windows, brought tears to my eyes I laughed so hard.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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Not to bring it up again, load Gentoo, and use bash + bash-completion. Configurable, extendable command-line parameter completion for any program that a template can be coded for. BTW, I (heart) Gentoo ;P
If it were up to me, I probably would use Gentoo. That or CentOS. However,sadly, it's not up to me. :(
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
LOL! That's the best post I've read this year! -CB :D
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thomas.michaud wrote:
However, you may find, after a time of studying Unix (including Bash / Ksh / etc) that it makes sense to you.
If by makes sense, you mean that I begin to understand how it works, then yes, I'll agree (i've been using *nix in some form for the last 8-9 years). But to say it makes "sense"? No way. It's primitive, and in many ways silly. It works, but it's, IMHO, mostly really poorly designed.
thomas.michaud wrote:
check out Apple
I agree - I have a triple boot Mac Pro at home, and do development on it. Of all the unixes (sp?) Apple/NeXT has tried to put some real thought into it, and I'm much more impressed with their version of it.
thomas.michaud wrote:
The whole point of RedHat is that they take this source and compile it for you and put it into RPMs.
Yes I'm aware of that. However Red Hat also puts the various files in *completely* bizarre places, so if you need to admin it, or modify it, it's much more difficult to deal with. If you're admining *only* using the GUI tools, then this is less of an issue, but if you're using the command line to admin the machine, then it's a real PITA.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Even using the GUI tools isn't as nice as it should be with RH... personally, I quite like working in *nix (it always seems easier for me to just get whatever little stuff I'm trying to do done than writing something against Windows, and big stuff is big stuff on any platform) but I absolutely loathe trying to set some tool up on an RH system... Apache is a nice example, what with the complete disconnect between the Apache documentation (and 90-ish % of the "how-to" articles people have written) on setting up some add-in and what files to modify to enable new mods, and the reality of the pre-installed instance RH set up and sprinkled around the file system with directory names that have *nothing* to do with what anyone else does. Some stuff works great, but there are too many people deciding they know best with some of the package tools... enough to make you go crazy and actually wish you could F3 your way through the registry manager to figure out where something's installed.
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
I've often wondered why DOS (and later, UNIX) didn't prompt you for missing parameters.
Ever write batch files / scripts? Commands that prompt when you don't want them to suck. They're the equivalent of low-level Win32 library functions throwing up message boxes. On DOS, the commands that prompt for confirmation generally have switches to override the behavior (
/Y), while on *nix there's a command that confirms infinitely.Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Ummm..... I think you missed the point. Commands that prompt for confirmation are annoying. Commands that prompt for missing parameters, on the other hand, eliminate the annoyance of having to type in your entire command line again (particularly if you don't have some kind of shortcut included with your OS for recalling recent commands). "To prompt or not to prompt" is a highly situational..... situation. The prompting options must be optimized for the specific command. Having prompts for source and destination in copy commands would be a welcome addition to all kinds of OS's.
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The JZ wrote:
changed much in 30 years because it works
Bullshit. That's the excuse that's used to just stop thinking. It *sort* of works. It gets you 75-80% there. But then the rest is just a kludge built on a hack. For example, take file permissioning. It *works*. Sort of. But it's not scalable. Take the "everything is a file" idea. It's simplistic, and it works. But is it really what you want? Probably not. Take the command line in general. For example, in unix if you type cp, you get
bash-2.05$ cp
cp: missing file arguments
Try `cp --help' for more information.or perhaps
$ cp
cp: missing file operand
Try `cp --help' for more information.Not horribly helpful. Compare this to an OS like OpenVMS (which was actually *designed* as opposed to the ad-hoc throw-something-against-the-wall-and-hope-it-sticks methodology that unix has mostly developed from). In VMS if you leave off arguments you're actually prompted to fill in something, like:
$ copy
_From: (you type in something, then hit return)
_To: (you type in something, then hit return)I can understand in 1970 that this kind of thing might have been missing. But for it *still* to be missing in 2008 is just inexcusable, IMHO.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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Could you not just write a bit of code to intercept the "manual" command and send it on to "man" if you really really wanted to? I would just like to add that at least you can paste stuff into the command prompt with out right clicking and selecting paste. Stupid Windows...:mad:
Squirrel Hacker wrote:
I would just like to add that at least you can paste stuff into the command prompt with out right clicking and selecting paste. Stupid Windows...
:wtf: How in the world is it possible that I've never tried that until you said something?:confused:
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
Somebody had to say it. Commands are fine with me, but scattering files everywhere is a terrible idea. Also, the following "It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down." is so true. How could anyone run enterprise systems under those conditions? It is ok to tinker at home with this crap, but to put it in production? Thanks.
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
100% whole heartedly agree. What I would like to know is, why the hell such a smart guy like Linus Torvalds decided to write a system based on a system that's almost 40 years old? Why didn't he pick on a modern operating system, like OS/400 (i5/OS, if your so inclined) or hell even one that has sensible command names with some semblance of object orientation. It's like to be current these days, you have to go back to the stone age. I mean, any operating system with commands like grep, awk, sed, or ed needs to be wrapped in tin foil and shot into the heart of the sun. (It would probably not burn anyway. Some things are just to dense to burn.) Track down a copy of the Unix Haters Handbook and enjoy some of the true terrors of Unix and they're clones. Jeff
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John M. Drescher wrote:
The other big reason. Is no antivirus or antispyware software is needed on linux machines and so I do not have to deal with the headaches that these horrible programs cause
That doesn't sound right to me ..... :doh:
We have to run symantec products at work and I have found that these products really like to eat memory and performance. 150MB of memory used directly by the virus checker is the norm. To me that is plain ridiculous and totally kills the performance of a machine with 512MB or less RAM.
John
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Squirrel Hacker wrote:
I would just like to add that at least you can paste stuff into the command prompt with out right clicking and selecting paste. Stupid Windows...
:wtf: How in the world is it possible that I've never tried that until you said something?:confused:
Because you were raised in a Windows world ;P (to be fair, so was I, but now every time I open command prompt in Windows I get really annoyed that I have to drag the file over or select the paste option from a drop-down menu...). I love the freedom to paste into the terminal at any time (you can't even do that in cygwin). ^V... wow, useful (and shift-insert gives you a ~... that makes sense). I don't understand why the command prompt has to be so un-user friendly (user un-friendly?)! :mad: No wonder people are so intimidated by it...
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Because you were raised in a Windows world ;P (to be fair, so was I, but now every time I open command prompt in Windows I get really annoyed that I have to drag the file over or select the paste option from a drop-down menu...). I love the freedom to paste into the terminal at any time (you can't even do that in cygwin). ^V... wow, useful (and shift-insert gives you a ~... that makes sense). I don't understand why the command prompt has to be so un-user friendly (user un-friendly?)! :mad: No wonder people are so intimidated by it...
No, I mean, how is it possible that I've never tried pasting into the Command window? I suppose that probably comes from being raised in DOS (not Windows, as you incorrectly assume ;P ) DOSKEY is natural, but the Windows GUI gets forgotten once I return to my native tongue. Though, if I recall correctly, gw-basic did have Cut-and-Paste. Of course, it also felt different than DOS, so it's every bit as impossible for stuff to carry over from there as it is for it to carry over from Windows.
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
Stupid post I prefer short command line commands that long mouse gestures like in Windows. The Bill Geits stile of programming and administration is evil for example the VB is terrible.Windows Help system is terrible you wait 2 minutes for opening it and 2 hours for searching answer and not always you find it at all, man is exactly what sysadmin need, also remote administration with scripts is more quickly than Remote desktop mouse using or writing full size programs for small admin needs. The scripts in *nix more flexible than in in Windows the shell is better. So also in Microsoft understood this, they do Sysinternal command line tools , UNIX tools, Power Shell, so check your mind and brain and don't write holly war flames more. :mad:
modified on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 3:05 AM
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
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You're not alone. However, you may find, after a time of studying Unix (including Bash / Ksh / etc) that it makes sense to you. You may, after enough time, even find that it is better than other systems. (Unix and programming go together like no other system.) However, if you REALLY want to move into the 21 century - check out Apple. They took Unix and shook it hard to get it to the 21 century. (I don't play with Apple, but that is the reports) BTW: why the hell would you build apache from source? The whole point of RedHat is that they take this source and compile it for you and put it into RPMs.
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I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
Jim Crafton wrote:
Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms?
I thought the great thing about standards was simply that there were so many to choose from. :) But hey, I work in an office when many developer (on different products) are coding in command lines and UNIX text editors. Not even Eclipse, I just keep thinking, "isn't your time valuable enough to afford something better"? Who cares that Eclipse / Visual Studio / etc. is a "memory hog", memory is cheap, time isn't... Oh well, at least the team using VS consistently rolls out new, functionality on tight schedules. Time will tell right :)
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Also, the application itself can't do anything to help the process along with a command line application, since it isn't even running when the user is typing the command line in.
Unless it's VMS :) In VMS you can simply type the command, and then the OS, in combination with template that the program has, will prompt you for options. And it's relatively easy to use and understand what it wants (in my experience). And if you give it bogus data, the errors, while not incredibly user friendly, are *light years* what you get on *nix or windows, which usually either fail silently, dump core, or spit out some cryptic error code/message that is frequently only tangentially related to what actually went wrong.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
That's funny. Vikram and I have been reminiscing about VMS and writing DCL command procs in another thread somewhere around here...
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
I've been given some more linux boxes to admin. Which means I've had to spend time today (well most of the day so far) randomly (re)learning the idiotic unix command line syntax needed to get things done. And I've had it up to *here* with the brain dead design and implementation of unix. Why is this system so popular? How is it possible for *multiple* generations of programmers to have their collective heads so deeply buried in the sand that virtually no real change or innovation has occurred in 30 years? Classic example, you need help, so what do you type? "man". That's right a 3 letter command (and you'd better be grateful it has a vowel, most don't), short for manual. Why not "manual", well that would be too much typing and apparently we're all still using 9 baud modems circa 1972. And to add insult to injury, it's a noun. Yes, you want to "perform" something, a verb, yet you're required to remember a noun. News break boys: it was idiotic in 1970, and *30* goddamn years later it's still stupid. Whatever. And why is it so hard to agree on a friggin file system layout and then everyone play nice? Isn't that what's supposed to be so great about open platforms? Apparently not, as genius wunderkinds at RedHat feel that they can add value by strewing random files for various common programs (like Apache) all over the place, leaving you, as the sys admin, to waste time spent randomly searching for config files. For example, if you build apache from source, the end result gets put into a standard set of directories. Binaries, configs, etc, all easy to find. If you install the apache module pre-built by red hat, thinking you'll save time, or be more "standard", or whatever goofy rationalization you're making, using their rpms, then no, we'll just randomly move shit around because we're *RedHat* and we know better. Dumbasses. And of course all the cute little techniques I've learned (again) today, will soon become forgotten because their so completely useless to what I do on a day to day basis, which is programming, most of the time. It's like you're trying to get useful work done with a bizarre 5 dimensional Rube Goldberg contraption that never really worked well to begin with, and now has so many patches, upon hacks, upon clever kludges, upon duct taped clusterfucks, that a nearby dog with a bad case of flatulence can blow the whole thing down. I hate *nix. Working with *nix makes me want to beat people with a club.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real
I don't know why I'm shocked that someone hasn't jumped to the defense of *nix... I floated in here from the CodeProject insider article that featured this post, so I didn't notice that this was the .NET forum at first. I tried my first foray into *nix (in at least 15 years) with Ubuntu recently. The only reason I did this was so I could experiment with an OS that would see all 8gb of ram without costing $1500 and run VMWare Server. I load the OS and patch it up. Like you, I have to re-learn the command syntax just to get around. I download VMWare's free beta 2.0 server... and it doesn't work. I google the problem and try to decipher the fix. I figure it out... and something else bombs. Google again... "Lots of people have that problem, no one is sure why. Try these 10 things to fix it" No thanks. I load Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and patch it up. Load VMWare Server 2.0... and it works. End of story.
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John M. Drescher wrote:
One reason is the command line part of windows sucks forcing you to use the slow user interface and watch the silly animations while you move files.
Hmm... In a Windows (both client and server) CMD box this command will move files and folders without the silly UI animation: "move {source} {target}" and you can add the optional /Y to suppress overwriting prompts. Truth be told, 99% of your old DOS commands still work in Windows client and server editions without having to wait for silly slow user interface animations. You can even join domains and add domain users using the command line.
Mike Poz
If you need something a little more robust for the command-line, use Robocopy.[^] It's in the Windows Resource Kit for 2003/XP, and comes standard on 2008/Vista. If you're looking for something a little more robust for the GUI, I can't recommend TeraCopy[^] enough. There's also a Robocopy GUI[^] if you're so inclined. But I do definitely agree that the built-in file copying for Windows is awful. (Though in fairness, I can't say the GUI file copying of any other OS is much better.)
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I respectfully disagree. :) Other than freshman-level engineering students, I don't know any Unix users who have to look up the syntax for the copy command. :) I find Unix being an entirely different mindset, and I find Unix to be much, much more powerful than any Windows I've ever used. I can do operations in Unix in 5 minutes that would take a whole day in Windows. A short digression: Recently for my research, I created a Unix command line tool. The source of the research's funding did not like that as they wanted a program with a graphical interface. Their reasoning being that their employees did not have the time to learn a command line program. (Now these are people who are performing IV&V on safety-critical software.) To which I replied, "You have people doing safety-critical IV&V who can't use a command line???" :omg:
The JZ wrote:
I can do operations in Unix in 5 minutes that would take a whole day in Windows.
No offense, but that's probably because you don't really know how to use Windows. You have really powerful tools at your disposal, right out of the box (command line, wsh). And if they're not powerful enough, it's trivial to add more functionality like powershell or perl (though perl is just an extension to wsh). Even command line scripting is pretty powerful, and not any more complicated than *nix command line scripting. You can set variables, use conditional statements, and jump around to different labels that run different code. Not really functions, but maybe procedures. And if that's not enough for you -- or you don't want to learn it -- you probably know Javascript, right? JScript support for WSH is built right in. So you can write your admin stuff in a fully object-oriented way. (There's even a regular expression object you can use.) If you DID want a little gui frontend, it's very simple to do with an hta. As for administration, there isn't much you can't do with WMI and ADSI. You can interface either of those from really any programming language, but they've made it really easy to do from WSH scripts and from powershell. So yeah, I can't help but think you feel that way because you just honestly don't know how to use Windows. I will say that it's not your fault, though. Microsoft doesn't make all that knowledge as readily available as *nix does.