[nycbug-talk] fave BSD tips/tricks?

[Jerry B. Altzman]

on 8/24/2009 6:46 PM Miles Nordin said the following:
> It's just annoying when basic unix things like apropos, xcalc, or
> emacs are missing.  Unix has become a single-user platform.  Working

Clearly, your idea of what 'basic unix' things are and mine differ. 
That's ok, _non disputandum est_ and all that.

> on something after some sysadmin has come in to delete eevrything he
> doesn't use is like a cluttered house full of unruly children: every
> time you try to do something you trip over some garbage and have to
> find another way, and eventually get three or four prerequisites deep
> in solving the original problem and forget what you originally wanted

Now, that's an interesting metaphor -- an emptier room is filled with 
more clutter.

> to do.  It's extremely frustrating and entirely avoidable.  At the
> very least I wish people would include whatever comes in Mac OS X or
> on an Ubuntu livecd, and even put some effort into not leaving out
> things others are likely to want, while around nycbug it seems like
> everyone applies their effort in just the opposite direction, swapping
> tips on how to ``minimize their installz''.

Surely, you can realize that there are good and compelling reasons to 
NOT leave around a full set of tools; the smaller your surface area, the 
smaller your system is as a target.

Of course, if you're making a development environment rather than a 
production server, having the kitchen sink available is a plus. We had a 
hard and fast rule about not even having compilers available on 
production servers: why give possible miscreants more tools to play 
with? Surely the notion of unix-system-as-server is as understandable as 
unix-system-as-nethack-platform?

//jbaltz
-- 
jerry b. altzman  jbaltz at 3phasecomputing.com  +1 718 763 7405