>>123 i think this idea comes from the fact that linux generally is terrible at "unix philosophy" in general, not because "unix philosophy" isn't good or useful. like /dev/ and /proc/ aren't really useful, except through specific command interfaces, you can't just echo and read from them to do useful things for the most part. shell scripting is fractured, every service invents it's own config methods some even inventing their own bespoke language for doing so. some distros try to be cleaner about it but there's only so much that can be done without ripping out the whole foundation and starting from scratch. Even the original unix team knew that the unix kernal was not able to maintain it's "unix philosophy" in a distributed network environment, which is why they threw it away and started plan9.
plan9/9front is like the only thing that actually does unix philosophy and the ease it provides when actually embraced from top to bottom is incredible. All the problems plan9 could be solved by forcing the unix philosophy on more hardware, not by aquiessing to the non-unix demands of the hardware. for example, in a fully plan9 world, i could from my laptop pipe the display of my tv connected to a blue ray player to my phone. instant reverse screen cast with nothing but file pipeing. of course we don't live in the world where it can run on all hardware, and where device drivers are borderline impossible to create without vendor support.
>>123 the unix philosophy is not now nor was it ever particular relevant to kernel space. it was primarily intended for userland programs. people simplify the unix philosophy to "write programs that do one thing and do it well" but they're forgetting the two other pieces: "Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."
i think this idea comes from the fact that linux generally is terrible at "unix philosophy" in general, not because "unix philosophy" isn't good or useful. like /dev/ and /proc/ aren't really useful, except through specific command interfaces, you can't just echo and read from them to do useful things for the most part. shell scripting is fractured, every service invents it's own config methods some even inventing their own bespoke language for doing so. some distros try to be cleaner about it but there's only so much that can be done without ripping out the whole foundation and starting from scratch. Even the original unix team knew that the unix kernal was not able to maintain it's "unix philosophy" in a distributed network environment, which is why they threw it away and started plan9.
plan9/9front is like the only thing that actually does unix philosophy and the ease it provides when actually embraced from top to bottom is incredible. All the problems plan9 could be solved by forcing the unix philosophy on more hardware, not by aquiessing to the non-unix demands of the hardware. for example, in a fully plan9 world, i could from my laptop pipe the display of my tv connected to a blue ray player to my phone. instant reverse screen cast with nothing but file pipeing. of course we don't live in the world where it can run on all hardware, and where device drivers are borderline impossible to create without vendor support.