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Red Hat Nullifies Differences Between Bash, Csh

Andreas(R) writes "Red Hat Software has revealed that future versions of the distribution will hide the differences between command-line user interfaces, creating a 'more unified shell prompt experience'. 'I don't mind if they rebrand and unify the GNOME and KDE interfaces,' said one Linux longhair. 'Frankly, I rarely use GUIs. But when they start messing with my CLI, then it's personal. I'm not going to sit here and let Red Hat infect my beloved tcsh with those annoying quirks from bash." Ah, nothing like satire that only a small group will truly grok. *grin*

54 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Dear god by EggplantMan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please don't let RedHat make emacs like vi

    --

    ?-|||-----x<*))))><
    1. Re:Dear god by analog_line · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, God. Please let them remove emacs altogether from the distribution, and all will be well with Red Hat as far as I'm concerned.

    2. Re:Dear god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      they'll probably be able to knock at least one CD off the distro if they do that.

    3. Re:Dear god by Anonymous+DWord · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why wouldn't you just install the one then? Who needs an OS when you've got Emacs?

      --
      "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
  2. bash? csh? i give my users... by dboyles · · Score: 5, Funny

    /bin/false

    It really is much more secure.

    --
    -- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
  3. Re:Question by analog_line · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because most of the people who read this site need to LIGHTEN UP FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!

  4. Re:Question by jonnythan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because Hemos liked the link and wanted it there.

    There's no mission statement for this site other than something like "the editors will post whatever stories or articles they like."

    What did YOU think slashdot was?

    Read the FAQ.

  5. Re:Slashdot editor question by SnAzBaZ · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you hadn't noticed it's under the "funny/humour" catogory. Turn this catagory off in your preferences if you dont want it.

  6. Viper makes me happy by Jason+Earl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    M-x viper-mode.

    1. Re:Viper makes me happy by __past__ · · Score: 5, Funny
      M-x viper-mode.
      For the newbies: If you are amazed how well Emacs can emulate lesser editors, note how easy it is to implement. If viper-mode wasn't predefined, making available all the power and expressiveness of vi in Emacs would be as easy as putting the following in your ~/.emacs:

      (defun viper-mode (while (read-char) (ding)))

      (Note to parent poster: The Emacs Lambda Forces are informed. The black helicopters will arrive soon. Resistance is futile.)

  7. hahaha by sanermind · · Score: 3, Funny
    That's great. Don't bother reading this comment. Nothing insightfull hear.

    ....but DAMN, that was funny. I loved the part about vimacs and emavics.... couldn't stop laughing. I don't understand why some people are posting complaints, like
    How dare a serious news site like /. put this on the main page


    Geesh. I'm glad for it, it brightened my day.
    --

    ---
    the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
  8. Slashdot Nullifies Differences Between News, Hoax by jukal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As stated in some other thread as well, read the first 2 lines of the atleast : "Fake News written by James Baughn". And still, if you wish to speculate on the matter. Speculate on whether you are still capable of choosing your favorite /bin/l33t if you are capable of speculating on this speculative hoax?

  9. Holy mother of god! by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've never seen such a collection of knee-jerk humorless reactionaries in my life!!! I think the responses to this article are funnier than the article itself.

    Warning: serious reactions to this article will go on your permanent record!!!

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
  10. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by psavo · · Score: 5, Funny

    To be sure, I give the fuckers /dev/random. If lucky, it'll screw their terminal and they won't bother me.

    --
    fucktard is a tenderhearted description
  11. What's funnier? by MalleusEBHC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article itself, or the fact that it seems like the majority of posters have failed to:

    A) RTFA
    B) Notice that this is "from the funny-funny-haha dept."
    C) Read the editors comment Hemos left in the little blurb once again clueing them into the fact that the article is a joke just like the ignorant fools who have started to bitch already.

  12. Best part from the article.. by schon · · Score: 5, Funny

    This bit had me rolling on the floor..

    The head of the Emacs Flame War Re-enactment Society (a group that re-enacts the great Usenet emacs versus vi flames wars of the 20th Century) said, "Red Hat is destroying our cultural heritage!

    Ahh.. I know guys who belong to war re-enactment societies.. and this about sums them up..

  13. Re:well then, don't use RH by Soko · · Score: 5, Funny

    _But when they start messing with my CLI, then it's personal. I'm not going to sit here and let Red Hat infect my beloved tcsh with those annoying quirks from bash._

    The solution is quite simple: don't use redhat and quit whining. You don't own bash or csh and you sure as hell don't even remotely have the right to complain about the modifications redhat is making. It's free software and nobody is forcing you to use it.


    *blink**blink* Henh?

    Ohhh.... Is this thing on? Good. *AHEM*

    Here ladies and gentlemen we have the common Nolifeium Nonhumourum Slashdoticus. Notice the serious countenance, the white skin and it's most distinctive marking, the flat, bald forehead from all of the jokes that go flying just over it. This particular species is closely related to the Userum Newbius Nocluseies, who also are prone to spouting off at the mouth with no clue and are usually just as humour impared. Please move along now, there's lot's more to see.

    Soko

    (Like the Smarticus Assunum Typesum ... :-p )

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  14. True Comedy... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Dude, you are right, it's a fake story! It's Satire! THEY ARE NOT REALLY DOING THIS SO CALM DOWN! Dind't the foot as the Icon give you Clue #2? :x:q or was that ^q? Damn Vimacs!"

    I think the real comedy here isn't the satirical write-up, but the responses to it.

  15. Re:huh by analog_line · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, it's one gigantic game of "Spot the Looney".

    I'm not sure what're funnier, the article, or the people who either didn't read the article, or who didn't get that it was satire.

  16. Re:RedHat policy by prockcore · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think RH is limiting choice now.

    Too many options is bad sometimes. I mean what would happen if a news oriented website were to give you the option of reading both regular news and satirical news on the same page?!

    Oh wait..

  17. At least the size would be reduced... by Raleel · · Score: 5, Funny

    by at least one cd, if they removed emacs.

    I told a coworker of mine that the 2.4.x kernel cannot support a statically compiled emacs, because of the 2TB file limit.

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
    1. Re:At least the size would be reduced... by Z4rd0Z · · Score: 3, Informative

      Christ almighty, what the hell do they put in libc to make it 24 megs? On my FreeBSD system, libc.a is 1568K, and there is talk on the mailing list of finding ways to trim it down.

      --
      You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
    2. Re:At least the size would be reduced... by jonadab · · Score: 3, Funny

      A while back, I compared the sizes of source tarballs for Emacs
      21.0.105 versus the then-current milestone of Mozilla. Emacs was
      larger. (I did this comparison because someone had filed a request
      in Bugzilla that the editor have an Emacs emulation mode. I suggested
      that it would be less work to have a Mozilla emulation mode in Emacs.)

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  18. I use the new shell .. by Dr.+Awktagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    .. and it's actually pretty good, especially for newbies. For instance, "redhat-list-my-files-in-current-directory" is a little heavily branded, but it makes a lot more sense than "ls" to a new user. And the "Are you sure you want to run 'xyz' (Y/n)" prompts after every command saved my ass a couple times. Getting rid of all commands that can delete files is also great for security, and that's definitely an advantage over other distros.

    The only thing that really tripped me up was that Red Hat mapped "delete character" to the "d" key (probably to fix the whole backspace/delete confusion once and for all). And the character D is mapped to ^X-F4 which is a little hard to type at first but you get used to it. Since they made this change system-wide I learned it pretty fast.

    All in all a step in the right direction. Of course power users can always use another distro, or just type their system's source code onto the hard drive from scratch or whatever it is they do for fun on Saturday nights.

  19. Re:FAKE NEWS by ripewithdecay · · Score: 3, Informative

    They have this in their FAQ, too...

    This stuff is fake, right?

    Yes, the "news" articles published here at Humorix are, ahem, all made up. Fake, fake, fake. Don't take anything we say seriously (except for this sentence, of course).

    A few people have actually written in and asked if an article was true or not. While we are flattered that our fabrications were mistaken for actual news, the fact remains: everything here is fake. A few nuggets of truth might be found, but everything else is a figment of our imaginations. If in doubt, just remember this saying: "Fake news is to Humorix as unconfirmed rumors are to Slashdot."

  20. Re:*sigh* by norweigiantroll · · Score: 3, Funny

    you should, 'cause in the next version of RH I predict bash will depend on kmail and nautilus

  21. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by DragonWyatt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    /bin/false

    It really is much more secure.


    Actually, in some old *nixes, that absolutely was NOT the case. If the shell in /etc/passwd returned a non-zero value (note that /bin/false always returns 1), 'login' would drop them immediately to an emergency shell for 'maintenance'- usually a statically-linked Bourne shell, and sometimes a setuid root version!

    Not that this behavious persists today, but just to be safe, use /bin/true instead ;) .

    --
    Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
  22. In related news... by cmeans · · Score: 3, Funny
    Continuing it's efforts to blend various distinct elements of Open Source projects into unified implementations (See previous articles on GUIs and CLIs), RedHat will soon be providing a single application development & scripting language to replace C/C++, Perl, Python, Java, Forth, and Smalltalk.

    The new language doesn't have a name yet, but you can be sure that few will like the idea, many will have an opinion, and noone will read the actual announcement.

    1. Re:In related news... by __past__ · · Score: 5, Funny
      RedHat will soon be providing a single application development & scripting language to replace C/C++, Perl, Python, Java, Forth, and Smalltalk.

      The new language doesn't have a name yet,

      It has. It is called Lisp.

      Heathen.

  23. Re:Vi versus Emacs... by Senjutsu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not really. Vi is a word in several languages, which hugely inflates the results.

  24. Can't wait for vimacs by SiliconEntity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, I often have vi running in the left window and emacs in the right hand one. It's a good mental exercise to switch back and forth between them frequently. I wish I could train myself to use my right hand for emacs and the left for vi, but I'm not there yet. Maybe I could do it with two chord keyboards?

    1. Re:Can't wait for vimacs by MyHair · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wish I could train myself to use my right hand for emacs and the left for vi, but I'm not there yet. Maybe I could do it with two chord keyboards?

      Chord keyboards are too expensive. During troubleshooting a PC last week I had a ps/2 keyboard and a USB keyboard hooked up while trying to get the USB keyboard to work for the power-on password. After finishing I coincidentally had two working keyboards at 90 degree angles in a comfortable position for my hands. (This was a cubicle with a desk on each wall plus the little shelf that goes between them.) For the amusement of a coworker and myself I typed a few sentences and was surprised to see how natural it was for me.

      Now, as many geeks know, Dvorak made one-handed keyboard layouts, one for the left and one for the right. I've had thoughts about learning the left one to keep my mouse hand free (one or two Slashdotters have claimed they do this; I haven't because I'm a tech/sysadmin and use everyone else's keyboards), but now you and I could learn the left- and right-hand Dvoraks for simultaneous vi & emacs usage.

      If we can do that, then we can probably solve that Palestinean-Israeli thing afterwards.

  25. Re:Vi versus Emacs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    BUT, if you remove all of the VI links that include swear words, EMACS would definitely be the winner.

  26. Re:FAKE NEWS by tunah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Um... it's under the "funny" icon, the site is called "Humorix" and the description includes the word "satire"... what was your point again?

    --
    Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
  27. Re:Red Hat is doing the Right Thing (TM) by tunah · · Score: 3, Funny
    So your line of thinking is:
    1. Don't read article
    2. Post "insightful" comment, completely missing the fact that this was all a joke
    3. Get mocked by me
    4. ???
    5. Profit!
    --
    Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
  28. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by jpetts · · Score: 5, Funny

    /bin/false

    That is simply not true...

    --
    Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
  29. Re:Vi versus Emacs... by frankthechicken · · Score: 4, Funny

    And according to this VI is more popular than sex, proving that the computer is the geek's tool.

  30. Re:Question by ncc74656 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Why is an article from a humor/satire site (Humorix) being posted main-page to /. ?

    Hover your mouse pointer over the Monty Python foot at the top of the article. What does it say?

    "It's funny. Laugh."

    Hell, the foot itself ought to be a clue as to the nature of the article. If you're a humorless ass, just pass on this article and others like it. The rest of us won't miss you.

    "And now for something completely different..."

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  31. Below the belt by Jim+Norton · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Over the years, we've received nearly 1,000 technical support calls from people that have accidentally started vi and couldn't figure out how to do anything -- or even how to quit."

    I resent that! I know how to quit when using vi! ALT-F2! kill -9 vi!

    --
    -- Jim
  32. Re: mouse/keyb usage by distributed.karma · · Score: 3, Interesting
    > Now, as many geeks know, Dvorak made one-handed keyboard layouts, one for the left and one for the right. I've had thoughts about learning the left one to keep my mouse hand free (one or two Slashdotters have claimed they do this; I haven't because I'm a tech/sysadmin and use everyone else's keyboards)

    I'm still using the clunky yet compatible QWERTY, but one nice trick to simultaneous mouse/keyboard operation is using the mouse with your left hand (if you're right handed). There are several advantages:

    • With only one hand to type with, it's better to use the more dexterous one.
    • If you have a desktop keyboard with a number pad, your hands will be closer together and probably more comfortable.
    • Using the mouse isn't too complicated for the left hand. Your right-hand dexterity would be wasted on this simple activity.
    • Your right hand is naturally closer to the right edge of the keyb, where the arrows and other controls are. Great for web surfing.
    I've had it this way for years. Of course for proper touch typing you'll like using both hands, at least with qwerty.
    --

    --
    If you moderate this, then your children will be next.

  33. Re:Ed is the standard editor by josh+crawley · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
    Ed, man! !man ed
    ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)
    NAME
    ed - text editor
    SYNOPSIS
    ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
    DESCRIPTION
    Ed is the standard text editor.
    ---
    Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED! "Ed is the standard text editor." And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:

    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
    -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs

    Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

    "Ed is the standard text editor." Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

    golem$ ed

    ?
    help
    ?
    ?
    ?
    quit
    ?
    exit
    ?
    bye
    ?
    hell o?
    ?
    eat flaming death
    ?
    ^C
    ?
    ^C
    ?
    ^D
    ?
    ---
    Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

    "Ed is the standard text editor." Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
    ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

    When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

    TEXT EDITOR.

    When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

    Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

    ---BELOW this is garbage filled to pass IDIOTIC lameness filter the fuckwads at Slashdot implemented. I know Me how antidest guerge Now heusdys I dont qwnas Prutwew

  34. Re:Will someone please explain to a Windows nerd.. by BigBadBri · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can't be a 'windows nerd' - it's an oxymoron....

    --
    oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
  35. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by psamuels · · Score: 4, Informative
    I always thought the standard for false was zero and true was non-zero. Is if different for those two?

    As p3d0 said, shells behave the opposite. (Although there once was an odd bug in - what was it, Ultrix? - where csh behaved the opposite, i.e. didn't behave the opposite, i.e. was buggy, with regards to the && and || short-circuit operators. But then, csh history is replete with odd bugs.)

    But to expand on the point: in Unix, the exit status of a program is an integer (7 unsigned bits, anyway: trying to use more is not portable). Convention dictates that 0 is normal termination, non-zero is abnormal, and anything over 128 means it was killed by a signal rather than the exit() function. (Which signal? Subtract 128 to find out.) Furthermore, many programs document their various abnormal exit status numbers to mean various failure cases.

    Note that even MS-DOS (and all of its misshapen get) uses the zero / greater-than-zero convention. In DOS, a process's return value is called the "errorlevel", which indeed more accurately describes its main purpose.

    This convention also goes a little deeper in Unix. Most system calls and many C library functions (remember, the standard C library was first defined on Unix) return 0 for success (or similar concepts: "equality" in the string compare function strcmp()) and non-zero for failure ("inequality" in strcmp()). Even system calls which return other meaningful integers (open(), for example) generally use >=0 for success and -1 for failure.

    So it may make no sense from a boolean logic point of view but zero==true is surprisingly widespread. Mostly because there is often only one way to succeed at a task but many ways to fail, and it's useful to be able to report specific failure modes.

    --
    "How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
  36. Oh Gawd, More Holy Wars... by kaladorn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... so of course I have to intrude... :)

    Maybe the reason everyone is looking up vi on google is because it is so *intuitive* and *easy-to-learn*?

    Then again, I personally think emacs is a tool of the devil.... ;)

    http://www.textpad.com - all the editor you'll ever need

    --
    -- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
    1. Re:Oh Gawd, More Holy Wars... by kootch · · Score: 3, Informative

      Best text editor: BBedit

      "It doesn't suck"

  37. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by FauxPasIII · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> To be sure, I give the fuckers /dev/random. If lucky, it'll screw their terminal and they won't bother me.

    But if you're supremely unlucky, it'll drop them to a SUID root perl process. Do not taunt /dev/random.

    --
    25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
  38. Re:Question by jonnythan · · Score: 4, Informative
    Since you didn't read the FAQ like I said, here it is from Mr Slashdot himself:

    Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is.


    The home page is whatever Malda wants to make it. Slashdot started as Rob Malda's pet project, and that's basically what it will always be. It's an obscenely popular project and makes some money (maybe) now, but it's still his personal project.

    Deal with it. No one, especially Rob, cares what you think "should" be on the main page.
  39. Re:Vi versus Emacs... by kasperd · · Score: 3, Informative

    Vi is a word in several languages.

    Yes, as an example "vi" happens to be the danish word for "we".

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
  40. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by Cryptnotic · · Score: 3, Informative

    It won't work. /dev/random isn't usually marked as executable. Even if it were, it wouldn't even get to run anything unless by some miracle the random string was a valid ELF header. Of course, the random string could also be something like "#!/bin/bash", thereby giving them a shell.

    What you want to do is make a script like:

    #!/bin/sh
    cat /dev/random

    Then make that script their shell. When they log in, they'll just get lots of random crap.

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  41. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by gotih · · Score: 3, Informative

    if you have ever taken ANY C class you will remember that line at the end of your function 'return 0;' that meant 'everything's fine'

    --

    fear is the mind killer
  42. Re:RedHat policy by enigma48 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Too many options is bad sometimes. I mean what would happen if a news oriented website were to give you the option of reading both regular news and satirical news on the same page?!

    I'd imagine a Chinese state-run newspaper would use it as their prime news source.

    Oh wait..

  43. This is the real story! by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Funny
    Code Taco Emergency!

    Best quotes: HUMORIX WORLD HEADQUARTERS -- Two Humorix unpaid interns were injured earlier today as the result of mass panic induced by an unexpected attack of the dreaded Slashdot Effect.

    The two injured interns are actually specially bred chickens trained to peck the reboot button on our two Windows PCs when the screen turns blue

    ... and .... Preliminary calculations show that the damage caused by the Great Slashdot Effect Attack of November 2002 will likely total several dozen dollars. :)

  44. Re:bash? csh? i give my users... by Isle · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, I always return that in the end of the malloc function if it is succesfull.

  45. Re:edit.com by joto · · Score: 3, Funny
    ObJoke: I tried www.edit.com, but couldn't figure out how to use it.

    ObDisclaimer: Yes, I know what you mean, but this was actually the first thing that came to my mind...