Re: [PLUG] software choice

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 06:43:50PM -0500, Tobias DiPasquale wrote:
> Exactly what software __do__ you like?

I don't like software, particularly, or computers.

I like certain features of some software, and I think most features
of most software are horribly misguided or broken for a variety of
different reasons. (Both, "I think they're bad for a variety of
reasons," and, "A variety of causes makes them bad.")

I don't see any reason anybody SHOULD like modern computer software.
Most of it is user antagonistic, incomplete, or wastes more time
than it saves. It doesn't have to be that way, but it mostly is.
Pointing it out is just telling the truth. Changing that isn't easy,
but pretending it isn't true doesn't help any.

I think modern computers are grossly badly designed. I think that
especially of IA32 (if we built buildings like this, we'd have one
room, till we outgrew it, then we'd have four identical rooms
stacked ontop of each other next to the first room, then we'd have
thirty more rooms built out in a hallway from each of the stacked
rooms without any stairwells except in the first stack of three,
then...), but I think it of Macs pretty much too. And don't even get
me started on how broken Sun server designs are, and how shit just
doesn't work when all signs say it should, or quits working without
any provocation beyond cosmic particles.

> I hear you disparage almost any and all software on this list,
> aside from NetBSD and Mutt.

Actually, NetBSD's pretty horrible at a lot of things, and I
wouldn't recommend anybody who doesn't really understand OS
internals try to use it because it still breaks in ways that waste
days of my time to fix. I happen to know both OS internals and
NetBSD pretty well, and often enjoy/learn from fixing those
problems, which is why I keep using it.

I think bits and pieces of NetBSD are really great, like pkgsrc
(which works find on Linux and Solaris), and the basic design
principles (do things Right), and the license (*truly* free), but
there are lots and lots of problems. ("Want to watch movies? Whoops,
sorry, pthreads changed and it's impossible for a package for
mplayer to support both a kernel before 1.6Z and a kernel after
it, so you should just upgrade that 1.6K system. Never mind that
the whole build structure is broken at the moment unless you're
already running 1.6ZA with its associated gcc 3 and you can't use
a GENERIC kernel because it doesn't support your weirdo four-port
ethernet card...")

I think mutt's really great. But if you don't want to read email in
a text-based format, it's not for you. (Come to think of it, mutt
may be the only software I don't have a complaint about. Or, at
least, haven't recently.)

> I'm curious as to the kind of secret, superhighquality software
> that you are using.

I'm using the same crap the rest of you are. I just have the guts to
call it what it is.

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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