Listen at: https://archives.anonradio.net/202504020000_screwtape.mp3

This week we will talk about the Unix Philosophy and how it compares and contrasts with whatever one might call the “Emacs Philosophy.”

The impetus for the discussion is a series of blog posts by @ramin_hal9001 called “Emacs fulfills the UNIX Philosophy”:

• The original introductory blog post
• The show notes

…as well as a fascinating discussion that took place over this past week on ActivityPub on the topic of the Unix philosophy and history of Lisp on Unix in which some very knowledgeable people have contributed anecdotes and facts.

#technology #programming #SoftwareEngineering #RetroComputing #lisp #r7rs #SchemeLang #UnixPhilosophy

within each of us
our loved ones, in tiny form,
caring's innate yield
    company at a distance
    legacy in case of loss

I'm daily using FreeBSD and Gentoo with "-systemd" global use flag, so I didn't closely watch to the latest news from the Linux world.

But, really?! They removing text logs from /var/log?? I bet, at 2026 there will be binary database for configuration instead of text files in /etc/ and /usr/local/etc/

https://messydesk.social/@robey/113689392683044802

@BradRubenstein @b0rk

The book The UNIX Philosophy by Mike Gancarz (quoted on the Wikipedia page) is a little gem: very brief, non-technical, strictly focused on the underlying design principles, expounded in simple language. Lovely. I have the habit of picking it up every once in a while and randomly re-reading one of its chapters.

Recently I switched from the default keyboard on my Android phone to Simple Keyboard from the F-Droid app. It doesn't have autocorrect, word suggestions, swiping/gesture support, or spyware.

I originally switched for privacy reasons, but I've noticed that my frustration with phone typing has gone down drastically. I was always struggling against autocorrect to not replace the wrong thing, and the auto capitalization and such never allowed me to develop any skill in typing precisely.

I'm much slower in typing now, but I feel so much more in control of the experience.

#android #fdroid #foss #unixphilosophy #typing

The Unix Philosophy died when every major Linux distribution decided SystemD was a good idea, and embedded it deeply into everything.

Nowadays, it's hard to enumerate and nearly impossible to replicate what software expects from a SystemD distribution when it's not running on SystemD, so of course I'm running SystemD.

#unixphilosophy #linux #systemd

@vkc sounds like an overkill for a lightweight app like waybar, to have all the bells and whistles from heavy desktop environments. What about rofi/dmenu clones for wayland? #unixphilosophy

It's hard to state how much these 300 odd pages have not only shaped the software I've written, systems I've developed, and the career I've had so far, but what increasingly seems to be a large part of my personality.

#introduction

#unix #unixphilosophy @robpike

Favorite init system?
#nosystemd #unix #unixphilosophy #artixlinux #voidlinux

I wonder if it's possible to live ones life according to the #unixphilosophy

I somehow missed this when it was announced last month:

#nushell is a, um, new shell. It aims to more strictly follow the #unixPhilosophy by spiting tasks up into smaller chunks/making more use of pipelines.

To do that, it treats data as tables of 2+ dimensions rather than as flat text, drawing a bit from #powershell but with a simpler design.

Not sure the benefits are large enough to convince me to switch, but it's an interesting idea.

http://www.jonathanturner.org/2019/08/introducing-nushell.html

I'm trying to decide between two window manager setups:

1)
#dwm, manage windows https://dwm.suckless.org/
#dmenu, launch programs https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
#passmenu, access passwords
#dlarm, set alarm https://github.com/codesections/dlarm
#tmux, manage panes https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
#run-or-raise, run program or focus it if already running https://github.com/Soft/run-or-raise

2)
#stumpwm, all of the above + more with extensive lisp config, https://stumpwm.github.io/

Which of these is simpler? Better? #unixPhilosophy