*nix lovers

noisebloom

noisebloom

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A thread for Unix/Linux lovers...

No matter how much my job pisses me off at times, the one constant is how much I love *nix operating systems. The philosophy and design is so simple, yet extremely powerful and convenient.

What flavor do you run? Favorite apps/commands? Anyone have a cool Vim trick to share (it is actually Vim's 27th birthday today)?

I run FreeBSD 11 at home on an Intel NUC (headless). Mostly use it for code development. Recently started using Zsh, and I'm liking it.
 
noisebloom said:
A thread for Unix/Linux lovers...

No matter how much my job pisses me off at times, the one constant is how much I love *nix operating systems. The philosophy and design is so simple, yet extremely powerful and convenient.

What flavor do you run? Favorite apps/commands? Anyone have a cool Vim trick to share (it is actually Vim's 27th birthday today)?

I run FreeBSD 11 at home on an Intel NUC (headless). Mostly use it for code development. Recently started using Zsh, and I'm liking it.
Click to expand...

I run Windows Vista. Literally.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
I run Windows Vista. Literally.
Click to expand...
tenor.gif


noisebloom said:
A thread for Unix/Linux lovers...
What flavor do you run? Favorite apps/commands?
Click to expand...

I've run RedHat, then Fedora (when RedHat sold out), Debian and Ubuntu. I've also used Knoppix LiveCD but only to diagnose computer problems: Knoppix works? Software problem in other distro. Knoppix doesn't work? Fml, hardware dead.

I'm a lazy muppet, so I like any linux distro that comes with a simple package management system.
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get update

Much better than all this
./configure
make
make install
stuff.

^__^

I don't really have a favorite command, though I can't live without regexp. grep = god.
 
Lady Jolanda said:
I've run RedHat, then Fedora (when RedHat sold out), Debian and Ubuntu. I've also used Knoppix LiveCD but only to diagnose computer problems: Knoppix works? Software problem in other distro. Knoppix doesn't work? Fml, hardware dead.
Click to expand...

Well if we're going to list our entire chronology, I started with Ubuntu shortly after it was released, then switched to Debian, then Gentoo (until I realized I didn't really need a custom version of everything on my system), then Arch Linux (amazing design philosophy, but too bleeding edge to be stable enough), then FreeBSD (my favorite so far because of stability, security, and simplicity). I'm probably missing some other distros and OS's I forgot about.

Lady Jolanda said:
I'm a lazy muppet, so I like any linux distro that comes with a simple package management system.
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get update

Much better than all this
./configure
make
make install
stuff.

^__^
Click to expand...

I don't remember why I started disliking apt-get, but I did. I think I didn't like how the dependency resolution worked. Arch Linux used an amazing package manager called pacman, which I highly recommend.

Lady Jolanda said:
I don't really have a favorite command, though I can't live without regexp. grep = god.
Click to expand...

grep = god, indeed. awk, sed, etc. are all the Gods of *nix we worship.

I love all the crazy shit you can do in vim. I've been using it for 15+ years, and I still learn new things. I also love all the bells and whistles that come with git. I'm a huge sucker for productivity tools, especially CLI ones... (I recommend Task Warrior as the best CLI task management app ever)
 
Last edited:
Late to the party as usual but
I run FreeBSD 11 at home on an Intel NUC (headless). Mostly use it for code development. Recently started using Zsh, and I'm liking it.
Click to expand...

Likewise as a long-time server user of FreeBSD, BPF is a rather awesome firewall/router as well and in fact I'm building the latest as we speak since finally got around to it this weekend - I am using the beloved Meltdown Central box (Optiplex 990) to install it and then it'll get transferred to the C2758 board that actually does the routing and page serving and all that. Have been a FreeBSD user since ... 2001? and have always loved the OS for its stability and consistency, none of that Linux stuff where commands seem to change all the time (as well as service names and file locations) not that I don't have respect for that OS, it's plenty capable and does get the modern bells and whistles before the *BSDs do.

Unfortunately the love for vi(m) is weak here as I never bothered to learn the command sequences so will just use ee (in BSD) and nano and derivatives in Linux - well if installing one which doesn't just boot up to a GUI or have to edit xorg.conf manually as the ritual used to call for back in the day. Linux OSes? Starting with Mandrake back in 1999, RedHat, various Ubuntu (Kubuntu for my own use since KDE > Gnome, sorry) and Linux Mint for relatives who like to get their Windows installs bricked with malware though it just works great for them there. Otherwise have tried things like Arch Linux and Gentoo as well, probably a few which are not coming to mind.

I run Win 10 for gaming, but I absolutely need BSD or Linux for any sort of development work.

Vista, tho...
Click to expand...

Yep. But dang that Vista. Windows is OK for dev work too but... maybe less OK with the new Win 10 development "model" they have going.

Favorite apps, well they are not apps but jails and BPF in BSD, then asterisk for doing away with overpriced phone service, something could be said about the new compilers which have been introduced in recent years although again not apps technically.

Does VMWare count? It is *Nix too so mb can sneak that in.

Good thread though.
 
jkxx said:
Late to the party as usual but


Likewise as a long-time server user of FreeBSD, BPF is a rather awesome firewall/router as well and in fact I'm building the latest as we speak since finally got around to it this weekend - I am using the beloved Meltdown Central box (Optiplex 990) to install it and then it'll get transferred to the C2758 board that actually does the routing and page serving and all that. Have been a FreeBSD user since ... 2001? and have always loved the OS for its stability and consistency, none of that Linux stuff where commands seem to change all the time (as well as service names and file locations) not that I don't have respect for that OS, it's plenty capable and does get the modern bells and whistles before the *BSDs do.
Click to expand...

:laughing: Can we be nerd pals?!

jkxx said:
Unfortunately the love for vi(m) is weak here as I never bothered to learn the command sequences so will just use ee (in BSD) and nano and derivatives in Linux - well if installing one which doesn't just boot up to a GUI or have to edit xorg.conf manually as the ritual used to call for back in the day.
Click to expand...

vim is only necessary if you need to do a lot of heavy text-editing quickly and don't want to bother writing a script or stringing together an ugly mess of sed/awk madness, but once you get past the initial learning curve, the absolute comfort it provides you is unmatched, in my experience (though I haven't given emacs a fair shake). I find myself in disbelief when I see what people have to do in VS and such to make dramatic code edits (it often looks physically painful in the finger parts).

jkxx said:
Yep. But dang that Vista. Windows is OK for dev work too but... maybe less OK with the new Win 10 development "model" they have going.
Click to expand...

I feel dirty developing in an environment that has such high levels of abstraction and so much going on under the hood... It's fine if you don't need to do lower-level things with the system, but if you do, the underlying built-ins are mediocre and inconsistent enough to drive me nuts, and whenever I try to google the "Windows" way of doing something that's a simple Linux command, I end up happening upon a Stack Overflow thread with the top answer recommending a ridiculous VB script...

I think I need to look into using Powershell and maybe WSL... Unless the latter is the dev model you're referencing.

jkxx said:
jails
Click to expand...

Jails are fantastic. It's insane to me how simple and fast they are.

jkxx said:
Good thread though.
Click to expand...

I know, right?!
 
:laughing: Can we be nerd pals?!
Click to expand...

Sure, why not :D

There is something to be said about how much processing can be done (on tokens an data) in *nix that Windows was simply never conceived to do - there is a learning curve but once it's mastered to some degree one has plenty of power at their fingertips to do things which would take a good deal of slow *point and click* processing steps in Windows - but that's the problem there, everything is point and click whether it makes the most sense or not. I don't think they'll adopt the 'device as a file path' idea any time soon either. I do think some of the more complicated stuff does turn into yet again more PnC in VS maybe with the addition of some purpose-built extensions to provide some help, but then I love to write code which looks disorganized so haven't worried too much about this.. until now that is since I'm starting to develop some stuff for work that uses some shared code we keep in a TFS. Will see how that turns out.

Microsoft used to be of the philosophy that we want to keep the best APIs secret and obscure and to ourselves and everyone else can torture themselves with something inferior we have provided for them (brought the 3Es to mind too) therefore, yes, an awful lot of APIs and interfaces with various degrees of compatibility and capability available nowadays. And they necessarily insist on throwing some newfangled bolt-on like UWP in there to confuse matters further, although .NET seems to have been a mostly good idea. The problem here is that when they want to do something nefarious they do insert it into the kernel binary and it tends to bypass components which should be counted on for security and/or reliability - case in point the telemetry spyware going through the Windows firewall even when the firewall is configured to block its requests. Windows won't be taken seriously with such "features" present. Powershell and WMI are both good and modern and for admin tasks can do quite a bit although I'm only learning the former now despite it being available for years. Definitely recommended over the ole VBScript scripting solutions.

(The 3Es)
 

“Yes I love technology....”

@noisebloom if you don’t use this as your future wedding song vow, I’m going to be highly upset.
 
Also, my dad is a software engineer and he uses Redhat Linux as his OS. He loves it. I find it pretty amazing too.
 
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