[nycbug-talk] fave BSD tips/tricks?
Jerry B. Altzman
jbaltz at 3phasecomputing.com
Tue Aug 25 10:07:28 EDT 2009
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
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