Love of Unix

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.

Comments

mmmm...unix

[Anonymous Coward]

i can understand that. all i need for valentines day is a can of mountain dew/jolt/, a redhat cd, and the warm buzzing sound of my computer. mmmmm...unix.

Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

An excellent article .. and uncannily true :)

AWESOM-A POW-A

[Anonymous Coward]

Great article! I'm tempted to forward around the office, even to the NT-heads.

i loved SunOS 4.2

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . because there was a sysadmin to install things.

my affair with linux has been wracked by infidelities.

get a life, people

[Anonymous Coward]

"ah *nix, how i love thee.. blah blah". get a life, will you please?
love people, not things.
slaves to the machine.

get a life, people

[Anonymous Coward]

i like to fsck my sparc.


www.unixsex.com
the way of the future!

That's right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Love people, not things!

Among the "things" you are not allowed to love:
the feel of wind on your face
the touch of your children
the taste of ice cream
the satisfaction of a job done right
the power of a flexible computer

Year 200 in a Nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else notice how they have this interesting article on year 200 (I suppose
I can just say Y2H) on the side bar?

That was beautiful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. Why the hell would I want to use an operating system with a command line interface in 1999?!!

A. Because you are a member of Homo sapiens, a species whose methods for communicating have evolved over thousands of years from using pictures and glyphs to using written and spoken language.

Or, perhaps you are not.

Sometimes I wonder if the low reading comprehension test scores in the U.S. might not be related to the widespread adoption of the Macintosh in public schools.

U*ix sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It just sucks (much) less than the other mainstream OSs

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...Let's try again....

[Anonymous Coward]

With quotes this time:

"~mine || ~yours"

Thing is, it looked fine on the preview. Oh, well.....

GREAT SIG !!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,
do you mind if i use your comment as sig,i know a lot of ppl will laugh at it !!!

Canadian AC

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you could add: make me; finger you

What was that unix set of commands that proves the unix is the product of the devil? I know parts of it go something like:
date
touch
finger
strip
mount
make love
umount
sleep

Sorry if I lowered the intellectual level of /. with this posting.:)

Better than Unix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Sun Workstations there were Apollo Workstations with their Multics-like OS called Aegis. Twas a thing of beauty!

That was beautiful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a Macintosh teaches more english than an OS with 500 3-letter commands with no vowels in them.

Yeah, but NT is better in bed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so if ya want to get screwed, go with Windows NT!

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, baby... Wanna spawn a process :-)

love of OS != love of a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

how he put some but all of my feeling (for unix) in one page is just inspiring... the lack of feeling of some ppl's seeem's to me cause they havent tryed any of the unixes.. O' the joy they are missing!!!!

and yes love of os != love of a woman, they are diffent but cause we lack a better words, the term werks

CLI, GUI, and general language proficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Some years ago I remember reading of a test that demonstrated that DOS users scored significantly higher on basic writing tests -- grammar, punctuation, and spelling -- than Mac users.

I'm still glad, however, that automobile driving interfaces are not restricted to a command line.

Signed,

CLI Monkey
GUI Monger

fsck?

[Anonymous Coward]

get a modern OS that has a journaling file system

How much does a prostitute cost nowadays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better save up your money, I hear they charge more on Valentines day!

I'm really sorry, some of you need to get out more

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really sorry to say this, and you can flame me because I an anonymous coward, and you probably think I am using Windows, but really I am using linux, with a week old compiled 2.2 kernel in lynx, because my video card sucks so bad I can't stand to look at the poor refresh rate in X, but anyway, to my POINT. Some of you really need to get out more, if they only love in your life is UNIX. I mean, really. C'mon, there are some things human companionship cannot replace. And honestly, I thought the article was funny and cute, but not anything to take SERIOUSLY. Sheesh!

get a life, people

[Anonymous Coward]

settle down dude.

do you have _no_ sense of humour?

oh and by the way, we're all slaves to the machine. The fact that you posted on slashdot shows that you are too. Get over it or live in a cabin in the mountains.

andym

DUUUUHHHH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

To the weenies saying "I'd much rather have sex with a woman than with a computer" :

Well, duh. I've been with a lot more chicks than flavours of Unix.

I love Unix, have a passionate devotion to it, but if my hard drive got corrupted and I lost everything, and my Unix CDs burnt and computer exploded, I wouldn't be too upset. I'd expect most ppl here would be the same. There is a lot of life beyond computing. I'd expect most ppl here would feel the same.

Choosing between recompiling my kernel and getting laid? wow, that decision is difficult... hahahahaha you dolts. All of us would choose a night with a chick over a night with a computer any day.

I feel really stupid posting this... It should all be obvious.

Methinks some people need to insmod sense_of_humour.o

Cheers

AndyM

In love with Unix? Yikes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unix has some niceties, and interesting hacks
but it is _not_ beautiful inside.

Beauty is Lisp. Outside and inside. The moment
you finally `get it', you can't help falling in love.

For me it was at first sight. At 15.

I've been a slut too.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully I can get this VR project running soon...

I just need RISC and too finish off the body suit.

Until the world has accepted the fact that VR is the future, I shall merely exist in vain....

I will be posting again once everything is caught up and I shall be leaving a URL to my Beowulf harem....


VR Holmes

That was beautiful.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a book called 'Laptop buying guide' or
some such thing in almost every library here in
Boston. It has a warning to parents that they
should avoid Macintosh laptops as they promote
illiteracy :)

GUI != evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

The attraction of point and click is you don't have to know what you're doing because you can just click around until you find it, so no real effort to learn needs to be exhibited by the user. A command line isn't that forgiving but it is certainly more efficient a) because you "need" to know what you are doing first. b) because I can type "cat /foo/bar/file" a whole hell of a lot faster then I can either open up a text editor and open the file or navigate to the file and double click it.

I just recently quit my job to move on to a bigger and better LINUX career :) and I've been writing my manifesto on what it is I do here and what some of the basic tasks are so until they hire a new sysadmin they won't be totally SOL. We've got a good mix of machines here Netware, Solaris, NT, MacOS, LINUX and while writing that documentation the UNIX stuff (the "hard stuff") is pretty straight forward: "edit this file, type this command, done" the NT stuff takes 3 times as long because everything it "click this, click that, then do this..." It's been an interesting experience trying to write it all down. Oh well enough rambling...

Yikes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, that'll be far more fun once there's USB support for Linux.

UNIX license plates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't, but my boss from my previous job has the license plate "X86 BSD". She wanted to get "FREEBSD" but couldn't -- the department of motor vehicles was convinced it was a drug reference..

UNIX license plates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in CA I once saw one that was something like HACKUNX or HCKUNIX, bah you get the idea.

Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcastic comments aside, I don't think a choice of interface can affect your comprehension/literacy/etc. Someone else pointed out that DOS users scored higher on various tests than Mac users. This is probably because it (and command lines in general) require more intelligence to start with because you need to devote much more of your brain to using it.

A well-designed GUI (ruling out Windows pretty much by default) is at least as efficient as a command line, and leaves more fo your brain towards getting stuff done.

Making something "intuitive" doesn't mean it's designed for idiots, just that it's easier to figure out something and to get things done, and when you're trying to get things done, it doesn't distract as much from the task at hand.

I think I'll get laid instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with your sister...

get a better paying job

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, fact of the matter is that UNIX skills are very marketable while being able to point and click doesn't qualify you for much.

I doubt you'd tell someone in medical school or law school that they should drop out and get a life, would you?

I get better experience/education every day on the job than I could get in school, and the pay's not bad either.

You could probably argue that lots of modern-day urban dwellers have no life, but at least I have job security for the forseeable future.

UNIX license plates?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got two cars: a late-model muscle car with my initials as the license plate, and an older car that I use as my daily driver. The latter does not have personalized plates, but I've been thinking about it. It's old, it's a bit ragged, but it still runs great and gets the job done when I need it to. So I might reconsider and get some personalized plates for it.

You guessed it: "PDP 11"

mmmm...unix

[Anonymous Coward]

on second thought, i'd like a blonde instead of a redhat cd. they're much more fun.

at least he didn't get into mounting filesystems..

[Anonymous Coward]

Or niceties of parent processes killing their children :)

But cute nonetheless.

The love of my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved the WPS.... back in 1992, when 2.0 first appeared I wrote a dead simple text editor extension to the desktop, so that any data file which wasn't associated to a program would open into a sizeable frame with an MLE within it. No drop down menus nothing, just like the original WPS file windows (speed of screen redraw was my priority). All the key binding were user modifiable. All actions were performed on a thread. I could access any desktop object from a keystroke, Build Project Ctrl-B, Compile Results Ctrl-P and the editor was completely integrated into the desktop, other programs would use it all the time. I got to the point where other people couldn't see what I was doing with the computer because I would be editing and swapping between files, compiling and debugging the program faster than they could follow..... I became one with the machine ;)

Windows 95 was a weak attempt at what the WPS was doing years before, except it didn't have the elegant underpinning, and does everything through a bloated, slow and illogical object model. I'm yet to see anything as elegant (GUI wise) as the WPS on Linux.

You egocentric pig!

[Anonymous Coward]

What complete BS!

First off, the person who made the comment assumed that language has a linear evolution, namely from pictures and glyphs to spoken and written language. Every culture on earth at the present uses a combination of all these forms of communication, which also includes body language. One does not replace the next. You are being very egocentric when you imply written language is the highest form of communication that every human should aspire to (especially when dealing with computers). If I understand what you're saying, then you might say doing away with art altogether (primitive, wordless expression) and increasing funding to libraries (depositories of advanced written language) would be a fantastic idea. We all know that language is inadequate in many situations, and can and has failed us on innumnerable occasions.

The last part of the comment is the sort of "pseudo-science" that people bring up to make people latch onto anything they say. Sure, there's a possibility that what was said is true, albeit a small one. I can't deny it because I have no proof to the contrary. The comment is totally unfounded, however. How can you even begin to agree with that crap? Hmmm, let's find a scapegoat for the decline in U.S. student performance. Why not look at more probable causes first, such as decreased standards in schools, intead of bashing a computer platform that you happen not to like?

Another thing. What does reading comprehension--how well you understand a written passage--have to do with a command-line interface? Command-line interfaces deal with the abstract thinking areas of the brain. Reading comprehension does not.

I take it you also think the Japanese and Chinese written languages, among others, are primive since they do not use the Roman alphabet, but rather use representations of words and ideas in pictographic form.

Here are my two cents on OSes. There are certain things that a command-line interface can do far faster than any GUI can do. There are certain things that a GUI can do far faster than a command-line interface. The best OS will integrate the best of both worlds, and give the user the option of using either for any task he or she wishes to accomplish. Simplicity. Speed. Power. Flexibility. All that with an easy learning curve. That's what every OS should aspire to.

I will get off my soapbox now.

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...

[Anonymous Coward]

ln -h you me

-Anonymous Loser

U*ix sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Her name was common sense.

fsck?

[Anonymous Coward]

> get a modern OS that has a journaling file system

Yeah, like just about any version of Unix (except Linux, which isn't quite Unix yet).

Do you think you people went far enough? I mean..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been proven that to invalidate the fantasies of the highly delusional is not the answer. The best thing to say in this situation would have been:

#1 That's really great. Is it going to be one of those women you said you had sex with when you were "up in canada"?

#2 Is sex with yourself more romantic in front of the warm sexy glow of a blue screen?

#3 It's that girl that keeps sending you mail from nikki452@sexsite.com isn't it? Don't worry, I'm sure she'll mail back that telephone number you keep asking for soon.

#4 I used to have an imaginary friend to. It was a little annoying paperclip. I tried to train it to wipe my ass for me and give me a decent blowjob, but it just kept winking at me and offering Word97 Advice.

#5 What makes you think you'll be getting laid? She could just as well end up falling in love tommorow with some guy that isn't afraid to think.


my 2 cents.

; )

It's not just the silicon..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you forget about the silicon problems,
Unix is not beautiful because the whole thing
is designed around the limitations imposed by
C.

BTW, if we take `good hardware support' to mean
_good hardware_ support, then we've got a cases
of beautiful OSes in Genera and whatever was used
in the LMI and Dorado machines.

It's not just the silicon..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you forget about the silicon problems,
Unix is not beautiful because the whole thing
is designed around the limitations imposed by
C.

BTW, if we take `good hardware support' to mean
_good hardware_ support, then we've got cases
of beautiful OSes in Genera and whatever was used
in the LMI and Dorado machines.

i loved SunOS 4.2

[Anonymous Coward]

seems to be a little confusion here, SunOS is the operating system, Solaris is the wider environment (windows, user tools and so on). The dudes at Sun marketing came up with this wheeze in the final days of SunOS 4 ("Lets create some publicity by giving the same old stuff a new name!").

Such a brilliant example of re-labelling they continued with the new SysV based operating system; Solaris 2.X containing SunOS 5.=.

However for the "hard of understanding", Solaris 2.X sounds a bit old fashioned compared to MS WinNT 5.0.

Time for another marketing wheeze, let's promote the minor version number so Solaris 2.6 is followed by Solaris 7 (with a silent 2.). Where this leaves the SunOS version I haven't a clue.

As for the SunOS 4 vs. SunOS 5, well 4 is fine for workstations, small servers and legacy apps. But if you want performance and scalability with modern apps. on big boxes (E450s in our case) then Solaris 2.6 rocks out!

TTFN

Here's why!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because no-one has yet come up with a GUI that allows you to do everything you can at the command line, or to do it as fast. If you're just learning to use computers then GUIs are great because they basically provide "multiple choice" questions rather than require in-depth knowledge.

I want most of my my applications to have click and point GUIs, but for development work give me a command line interface anyday. Unix always was and probably always will be the best OS for software development.

mmmm...unix

[Alan]

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?

perspetive here...

[Elvii]

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... :)

It's true...

[John Campbell]

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.)

"have to use" != "love"

[John Campbell]

> ...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.

That's right!

[cduffy]

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]...

re: Get a life

[gavinhall]

Posted by stodge:

Oh dear....

Me, I'd rather shag a bird than a bot...

unix is a reflection of the nature goddess

[pixel fairy]

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.

i loved SunOS 4.2 ?????

[TedC]

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

Unix is my Bitty

[mholve]

Long live Unix. Alright! :)

ROFL!

[mholve]

Good ones, dude. :)

Let's have X!

Sockets, anyone?

You client. Me server.

I'll kick you in the tarballs!

...

Ny Ass!

[mholve]

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

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

my love...

[jonr]

Un*x is the love of many geeks lifes!

(First is overrated)

Yikes!

[Chemical Serenity]

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 life, people

[alany]

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.

Don't Think So

[alany]

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.

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...

[pneuma_66]

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

I think I'll get laid instead

[timur]

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

Wow

[GreenPickles]

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.

That was beautiful.

[YogSothoth]

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"

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...

[Skip666Kent]

"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...

UNIX license plates?

[Cereal Box]

When my dad lived in NC he had "/dev/trk" for the Ford Explorer and "/dev/fun" for the Miata. :)

*sigh*

[eGabriel]

I want to go home right now and be with my linux boxen.

get a life, jerk

[Tukla]

Hey, this guy not only has the romantic sensibilities of a brick, he also tried to use "nerdy" as an insult on Slashdot! LOL!

Bad UNIX joke.

[beb]

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

I'm going to marry *nix

[eo]

Yup.

Un*x vs woman...

[B5Ghost]

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

hmm...h��>�?�yX

[sawdust]

I was going to write something simillar and call it 'The Female UNIX' but Germaine Greer's lawyers would probably not be happy...

True True !!!

[rtfm]

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....
=^}

I tried Linux once

[Cid Highwind]

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.

Candy Hearts I'd Like To See...

[Cid Highwind]

mount /dev/you /me
man: why dump your girlfriend?
(returns "man:: too many arguments")

WOOOHOOO!

[Dast]

Right on the mark!

UNIX license plates?

[woodforc]

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...

True

[Tony Hoyle]

Apart from a small indescretion with a Win98 box (I was drunk, honest!) I would never be unfaithful to Linux.

Awesome

[Stiletto]

Lots of "it's funny cause it's true!" stuff there!

Having a life...

[ultra1]

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.

Stupid Jamie Zawinsky quote...

[ultra1]

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..."

lost love

[SkyWriter]

I loved TOPS-20 more... even VMS or MVS for that matter. Unix is ... just ok.

The love of my heart.

[jerodd]

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.

The jewel of my heart.

[jerodd]

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!)

The love of my heart.

[generic]

>... 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.

Love letter to Linux

[Master Switch]

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

The love of my heart.

[farmkid]

> 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

UNIX license plates?

[bee]

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..

[vtx]

SHOW ME THE SOURCECODE, SHOW ME THE SOURCECODE!!

Isn't that what Tom Cruise once said?

*nix vs those other OSes

[Skapare]

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.

UNIX license plates?

[bond james bond]

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.

Falling in love

[Dilbert_]

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.

Pedantry

[Arvind]

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 :)