Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 09:59:01 -0700 (PDT) From: DAve Goodrich <dave@pixelhammer.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Primitive tools Message-ID: <200006301659.JAA13971@otonabee.pixelhammer.com>
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on 6/30/00 4:07 AM, lex manno at lexmanno@yahoo.com wrote: > hi there, > > Well, I've been using FBSD for almost a year now and I > was wondering. Isn't it about time to remove primitive > stuff like vi and lynx from the o.s.? > > I mean, when there are editors like Joe and Emacs and > browsers like Netscape, why do we need to keep all > these antiquated monsters? > > For God's sake, let us modernize! > > bye, > lex This is long but bear with me lex, the story if worth it. Three years ago I was a Mac only web admin. I loved it, much better than some other OS choices for serving pages, very stable and fast *if* you know what you are doing. I decided to get into Unix for the more powerfull tools, the first draw was SQL of course. I tried Debian, would never install. Tried Redhat, ever heard that Johnny Cash song about the Cadillac? (it's a 55, 56, 57......... I build it one piece at a time....) That was RedHat to me, very patchy with pieces from a dozen different places. Tried Slackware, very nice, very clean and trim. It's still my choice on my Laptop. Then I tried FreeBSD. Whoo baby I was hooked. I have several servers running FBSD now, all headless, all remotely admin'd using vim and lynx. I learned about vim and lynx one dark stormy night when one of my servers (running X, for the modern cool config tools that used a mouse and buttons and checkboxes and such) went south because I made a boo boo when I rebooted the box. I went into a panic, nothing worked, mail bouncing right and left, web server down, it was a nightmare. I fixed it after 40hrs plus learning the hardway how to be a REAL server admin. I stayed in single user mode reading man pages to learn the commands I should have known, using lynx to read HTML docs and how-tos on how vi and ex worked. You see vi and lynx as primitive because they don't have the bells and whistles. I see vi and lynx as MORE powerful because they don't NEED the bells and whistles. I've recently tried code commander, kphpdevelop, quanta, bluefish, cool edit, all as replacements for BBedit on the Mac (I'm moving all my development work to Unix now also) After six months of trying these ginchie editors I'm moving back to VIM and GVIM. They work, they are stable, they don't do mysterious things to my files. They are tools I can depend on. I'd rather give up X. DAve -- Dave Goodrich Director of Interface Development Reality Based Learning Company 9521 NE Willows Road, Suite 100 Redmond, WA 98052 Toll Free 1-877-869-6603 ext. 237 Fax (425) 558-5655 daveg@rblc.com Web Site www.rblc.com -- "On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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