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Unix Operating Systems Software

Love of Unix 95

Posted by Hemos from the valentine-what? dept.
Tank writes "Here's a great little article at O'Reilly about the love affair many geeks have for *nix. Very appropriate as we approach Valentine's Day. Ahhh *nix, how do I love thee, let me `wc` the ways. " H:Perhaps I can compare 2.2 to a summer's day.
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Love of Unix More

Love of Unix

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  • Agreed... except I'd substitute coke, and since my 'puter already has linux installed, I have no need for a CD. Add a nice fast ADSL to that and I have all I want.

    Course I'd rather not be single, but hey, since I am I might as well make the most of it eh?
  • i'd love to either be compiling or making love, as either are better than driving slowly down the road for 8 hours... and it's funny, imho. i doubt if many here are really taking it seriously. i know i'm not... my gf would kill me... :)
  • I noticed this phenomenon quite a while ago... it seems to me to be the big difference between say, Linux and Microsoft's OSes.

    People use NT because it's been mandated by their employer, or it's got the program they need, or because it's the standard, or because they don't know anything else, or they've been brainwashed by Microsoft, or... and I have to say, I've even met one or two people who love the thing.

    These other reasons, for the most part, don't apply to Linux. People who use Linux do it because they love it.

    This is also true of other Unices, of course, and of OS/2 and the Amiga, and even the Mac, though their love is all mixed up with an unhealthy persecution complex. But no one loves Windows. At best, they tolerate it.

    (And before all the moronic flamers get here, let me add that, yes, I've got a girlfriend. And yes, we do sometimes do stuff other than sit around playing with our Linux boxes.)

  • > ...if you love games you have to use windows.

    There's a difference, methinks, between being forced to use Windows to play the games you love, and using Windows for its own sake.

    > Other people like windows so they can have 1 OS for the whole company.

    Again, this isn't using Windows for its own sake... Generally, the suits that make those sort of decisions don't have personal feelings about the OSes in question (well, not positive feelings, anyway... a general fear and loathing of anything computer-related seems to be common). If it was Linux with the 90% monopoly, these same people would be enthusiastically recommending that it be their corporate standard. They don't care what everyone's running, so long as it's the same thing.

  • Oh, yes. And the wind gives, asking nothing in return. A beautiful thing, that is.

    And my computer can make me forget my ills for a while. It sings to me; Forgives me my failings; Rewards me when I do well (if you don't know the rush of that thing finally compiling/linking/running, or of seeing your name in a changelog, you wouldn't understand).

    It is, indeed, a beautiful thing.

    Not as rewarding as the human touch, indeed... but true, faithful, unasking human love is a mighty hard thing to find and maintain... [sigh]...
  • Posted by stodge:

    Oh dear....

    Me, I'd rather shag a bird than a bot...
  • The nature goddess im refering to is venus as
    portrayed my masoch (Venus in Furs) ive thought
    for many years that unix was a reflection of this
    portrayal of Venus.

    Note, it is a reflection, and mirrors do distort
    even if slightly. but as nature is unforgiving at
    times, and cold at times, venus is also very
    rewarding to those who know her well. of course, in the realm of windows, one who is used to the
    warm frolic must wear furs.
  • SunOS 4.2? No such thing. 4.1.4 was the last release.

    Solaris is still considered to be SunOS; Solaris 2.6, for example, has copyright messages for SunOS 5.6. At least on a Sparc; not sure about intel.

    TedC

  • Long live Unix. Alright! :)

  • ROFL! (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    Good ones, dude. :)

    Let's have X!

    Sockets, anyone?

    You client. Me server.

    I'll kick you in the tarballs!

    ...

  • My kernel will be compiling in the background AS I get laid...

    Probably a stinkin' Windoze user that never heard of multi-tasking. Hmph. :)

  • Un*x is the love of many geeks lifes!

    (First is overrated)
  • Tim needs a new hobby. ;)

    I like using *nix and all, but Timmy here looks like he's about the break out the astroglide, grease up a USB port, and start doin' it like the doggies do.

    Tim! We're with ya man... seek help, k?

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Get a sense of humour, I ended up ROFLMAO at some of the comments, particuarly the one about NT being better in bed.

    BTW: Humans are just machines too.

  • I remember reading about some PET brain scan research that found using a computer in CLI mode uses similar brain centers to human language processing.

    Makes sense really, the semantic constructs may be different, but it is still the same fundamental function, parsing or generating a formal structure.

    While a lot of the brain is dedicated to processing visual information, I doubt that there is much language learning value from a GUI. The visual centers dump detail as much as possible. The language centers can't do this as that data has a much higher 'entropy' as far as the brains concept processing goes.
  • well actually there are candy hearts, calles cyber hearts or something like that. and some of the witty sayings are:

    defrag me
    love hertz

    and many more

    cristiana
  • Thanks, but I'll be getting laid for Valentine's Day. If you Linux weenies want to spend the day compiling your kernels, go ahead. Most of you probably don't know what you're missing anyway.


    --
    Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
  • This is one of the coolest articles I have read on Slashdot in a long time.

    In such a few paragraphs this O'Reilly author was able to express how I have felt about Unix for so long. Trying to explain why the command promt and editing text-based config files has been the confusion of so many of my friends up until oh-so-resently.

    I don't love you Unix, but I do love your [step] sisters! (eg: Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD)

    There's nothing like a grep in the morning.
  • Q.Why the hell would I want to use an operating system with a command line interface in 1999?!!


    One might just as readily ask ...


    Q. Why the hell would I want to want to read
    a book in 1999 when I could just watch television?


    Fortunately the reponse to both quesions is
    the same ...


    A. Because it is often the case that newer
    implies only "more recent than" rather than "is an actual improvement"

  • "My source is yours"
    "cat love|grep|you|more"
    "you mv me"
    "Let's fsck!"
    "rm -rf /"
    "him || me"
    "kill -9 your boyfriend"
    "chgrp yours myheart"
    "mt /dev/me"
    "!wait"
    "exit"
    "alias love='you'"
    "you && me"

    Surely there's more...





  • When my dad lived in NC he had "/dev/trk" for the Ford Explorer and "/dev/fun" for the Miata. :)
  • I want to go home right now and be with my linux boxen.
  • Hey, this guy not only has the romantic sensibilities of a brick, he also tried to use "nerdy" as an insult on Slashdot! LOL!
  • I heard it this way:

    Q: How does a UNIX Guru have Sex?
    A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;more;yes; umount;sleep
  • Wonderful article. It summarise all my heart has to say about Un*x (Linux in this case).

    Everyday I would find/discover something new about her. By reading the manpage, readme, config files... make me understand her more and more veryday... and love her more and more every minutes...

    There are times she will show some bad temper... but is always the case I did not read the manpages/readme/config files careful...

    Women? Where is the manpages? readme files? config files? What is their algo.? There are times I feel woman are being that can never be understand. How could you love them when I don't understand them...

    Yes! I LOVE Linux!
    B5Ghost
  • I was going to write something simillar and call it 'The Female UNIX' but Germaine Greer's lawyers would probably not be happy...
  • Like one of my other Net Admins told me the other day....
    *nix groupies LOOOOVE hearing about new kernels updates etc... How many ops people are out there saying " I can't WAIT till the next flavour of NT hits the streets.... It's gonna have the HUGE Balls!!!"
    yeah right....
    =^}
  • She was good at grep and wine, but was just never in the mood to fsck. Then she found out I had been seeing windows behind her back (I was just playing games! honest!) so she left me.
  • mount /dev/you /me
    man: why dump your girlfriend?
    (returns "man:: too many arguments")

  • Right on the mark!
  • Alright, who else has or has had a UNIX license
    plate? I had one when I lived in Vermont (up til
    last May). I live in GA now and opted out of
    getting one for various reasons. Wishing I had
    kept it now.

    If I only had a good picture of it scanned in...
  • Apart from a small indescretion with a Win98 box (I was drunk, honest!) I would never be unfaithful to Linux.

  • Lots of "it's funny cause it's true!" stuff there!
  • I use NT. I use UNIX (you name it, I've used it). I use Linux. I've pulled up the hood on all of them to see what makes 'em tick.

    Oddly enough, I get the job done and have a life as well. I guess you just aren't very efficient.

  • If I spend the same amount of time on a system that I spent money on (specifically, because the commercial offering was supposed to save me time and trouble), does the company I bought the product from refund me for the "extra" time?

    How about another quote:

    "Linux is only free if your time has no value. Then again, you could pay for your software twice..."

  • I loved TOPS-20 more... even VMS or MVS for that matter. Unix is ... just ok.
  • I must say that the true love of my heart is OS/2. Why is that? I love things that have been cast off--I like the person who is not the most attractive and who has faults. That's OS/2. The Workplace Shell is buggy and there's no way to ``kill -9'' a process which is stuck in a kernel function.

    But would I want to love something that was more perfect than I? Nay. I want something to which I can relate--something that, like me, has its faults, but also has the bright side. I truly do love OS/2.

    We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.) I was 9 years old then, and OS/2 and I grew together. Now she's a bloated, slow-moving, unsupported system, but I love her regardless.

    Yes, I do have relationships with other computers in my life, but it's strictly business. GNU/Linux and I are just friends; NT and I are not even that. And how could I abandon OS/2 and leave my dear children behind?
    We hvae produced many applications together--good, solid, 32-bit (and some 16-bit as well), and multithreaded software. No one else will accept these offspring--not even my dear friend GNU/Linux, or my acquaintance OpenBSD. (NT will play with some of my children, but snubs its nose at the 32-bit software. How could I leave my 32-bit children behind?)

    Lest you think that I be mad, I have been somewhat hyperbolic in this description; I don't really love software like I would a human. Yes, it is something familiar, and I suppose I devise some security from using a ``familiar'' operating system, but I do have relationships with people.) This article did touch a chord of my heart, however small.

    I will state in closing that that is no sound so sweet as the OS/2 HPFS bootloader loading OS2KRNL, or that of a periodic cache flush. They are familiar and comforting sounds to my ears. Indeed, even the CHKDSK (i.e. hpfsck), while not a sound I enjoy, is sweet because it is that of my beloved.
    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • Well, yes. Not my first OS by a long shot, but the first one (1) on _my_ system (as opposed to some mini) that (2) didn't suck. :-)

    >> We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.)

    My first axquaintance _was_ with 1.3 (the first stable version), but on a PS/2 mod 80 :-(

    We first met on a PS/2 Model 65 with 6MB of memory (85 nanosecond). There were a 60MB fixed disk and a 127MB fixed disk (on the PS/2 SCSI adapter).

    I also had C Set/2. It was love at first sight. Using slower hardware to get to know your operating system really makes you appreciate her more—there isn't a veneer of fast hardware to keep you from really knowing everything about her.

    (I won't get into long sessions late at night with the Kerneldebugger inspecting how OS/2 likes to arrange her page tables.)

    And what does "unsupported" mean?

    ``Unsupported'' is probably the wrong adjective. What I meant to say is that it does not have the thriving user base of, say, GNU/Linux—which makes me love her all the more. She's my own special OS, not something everyone else uses.

    what about a JFS?" (Want one!)

    IBM had the mercy to send me OS/2 Version 4.5 (beta). When OS/2 replays her journal log, it makes a new sound. It's strangely comforintg—I think I've heard it before. (Perhaps from my old AIX PS/2 days? I don't think I had JFS back then, but I was 10 years old then and did not know which way was up.)

    But we cling to our old loves...

    There is absolutely nothing like first love, whether it be with your operating system or with a human. Ah, for the days of that first friendship... I do feel I should say my relationship with OS/2 is entirely platonic (as my first friendship was). I am wondering what the ``Human Interface'' driver in the OS/2 USB support is. Hmmm.

    Cheers,
    Joshua.(Who wants to make sure no–one is taking this too seriously—we just like computers!)

  • >... well, "bloated" and "slow moving" have >nothing to do with "unsupported". I'm on a 486, >and OS/2 still outperforms Linux.

    Uh what version of OS/2 is that? I had 4.0 warp on a P133 with 32megs of ram and it was _DOG_ slow. I would walk away while it booted take a leak get coffee and it still wasnt done when I got back. I could get linux booted in under 30 seconds on the same box. And if I opened a few apps and mail tools I ran out of memory and the 32 megs of swap I had.
  • cat How | grep "I love thee" > The_ways
    # Let me; wc -c The_ways
    # Define when = at; when=at
    # Define NEED_YOU; NEED_YOU=`date | awk '{ print $4 }'
    $when -f I $NEED_YOU
    YOU="ARE_THERE"
    #Define ASK_MYSELF; ASK_MYSELF=$NEED_YOU;
    $when -f I $ASK_MYSELF
    whoami
    #Re_Define You; You=echo
    #Define tell_me; tell_me=`whoami`
    $You $tell_me
    $You calm me
    #You; touch me_in_ways_I_barely_understand
    #With love, The Machine
  • > I must say that the true love of my heart is OS/2.

    Well, yes. Not my first OS by a long shot, but the first one (1) on _my_ system (as opposed to some mini) that (2) didn't suck. :-)

    >We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.)

    My first axquaintance _was_ with 1.3 (the first stable version), but on a PS/2 mod 80 :-(

    The first _passionate_ encounter was with 2.0 =:-Q

    > Now she's a bloated, slow-moving, unsupported system, but I love her regardless.

    ... well, "bloated" and "slow moving" have nothing to do with "unsupported". I'm on a 486, and OS/2 still outperforms Linux. (That said, I have to point out that I know how to tune Warp; I've configured a Linux kernel that's better than out-of-the-box, but I don't guarantee that it's optimal). Nevertheless, OS/2 has always outperformed Win 9X on equivalent hardware.

    And what does "unsupported" mean? The fix packs keep rolling out, even for previous releases (so the system itself is solid), and the application market seems to be in some sort of flux from ISV's to open source. In a nutshell: I can do what I need, and I don't see that disappearing.

    > They are familiar and comforting sounds to my ears. Indeed, even the CHKDSK.

    But I'm immediately brought back to earth by another poster: "what about a JFS?" (Want one!)

    And to everyone else: This _ISN'T_ an anti-Linux post: while I continue to use Warp, I'm using/learning/investigating Linux: it's obviously the wave of the future. (And I do _NOT_ tolerate MS OS's on my personal boxen.)

    But we cling to our old loves...

    Greg
  • When I got my plates in GA about a year ago, I wanted BSD UNIX as my plates, but that was too long (6 characters max in GA). So on a whim I asked them to check UNIX for me, and no one currently had it. So it's mine now, whee. Back in IN George Goble had UNIX so I couldn't get it there. No idea who has it in the other 48 states, but if there's anyone else out there, feel free to post.
  • SHOW ME THE SOURCECODE, SHOW ME THE SOURCECODE!!

    Isn't that what Tom Cruise once said?
  • Yes, it sucks less.

    I've worked with other OSes both before and after Unix. But Unix, and in particular Linux, have simply done the job better, and suited the needs better, than anything else. I do remember when peecees first came out and I read a projection that some day everyone would have a mainframe on their desk. At the time I was working with MVS and thought //DUMB EXEC PGM="NOWAY" would people ever deal with that, not even computer people. VM/CMS was the alternative OS of the day among mainframes.

    Well, that day is here, and if we don't have some expensive vendor OS, we have Linux or FreeBSD or Beos or whatever. I love my *nix but I can't say the same about the stupid peecee architecture.
  • I saw one the other day that said, "NOICONS". Muay bitchin'. California plates BTW, so don't go thinking about changing unless you are from another state.
  • Well, I must say I have never used Unix much in the past and at my previous job. I've had to deal with it, but that was all. Unix was just a distant accquaintance. But now I work at a different place, and I have to learn the nitty gritty of it. And, strangely, it feels like I'm falling in love with it ;-) The article is smack on.
  • I think you meant that entropy is lower. Higher entropy == lower information content. That's why the second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of the universe keeps going up :)

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