Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

General topics, including off-topic discussion, goes here.
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Solomoriah »

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I learned the Tao of Unix on a Tandy Model 16b running XENIX, specifically the earlier version based on System III. My choices for full screen editor:

1. VI
2. there is no number 2.

So I had to learn. But the docs for the OS, while surprisingly technical in many ways, did not talk much about vi.

I was a freshman in college then, and still lived at home. One day I was out with the family and we stopped at a convenience store, a Casey's that isn't there anymore, and I happened to glance at the magazine rack which I expected to be full of magazines about makeup and hunting and cooking and cars and so on, stuff the normal people liked but I didn't get much out of (motorcycle guy, and not Harleys either) what did I see but:

Unix_World_Vol02_02_0000.jpg
Unix_World_Vol02_02_0000.jpg (97.2 KiB) Viewed 597 times
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Solomoriah »

I do NOT know how it got there. It's enough to make you believe in divine providence.

I bought it, of course, and I subscribed. And while the articles were very interesting and I learned a lot, it was the advertisements that were most useful to me. In the back of every issue was an ad for two posters sold by the magazine, one full of shell commands, the other listing vi commands.

vi_poster4.jpg
vi_poster4.jpg (307.64 KiB) Viewed 597 times
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Solomoriah »

Believe it or not, it was more legible in tiny print in the magazine than it is in this image I found online.

So I learned vi from that advertisement, plus a bunch of experimentation.

vi is hard. But the weird thing is, it's efficient. Once I learned vi and mastered regular expressions, I never wanted to code with anything else.
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
Hamish The PolarBear
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2023 10:23 am
Location: Somerset, UK
Contact:

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Hamish The PolarBear »

A couple of years ago I discovered Kakoune and now I kak many a plain text document, certainly all my configs.
User avatar
knghtbrd
Posts: 40
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:56 am

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by knghtbrd »

Neigdoig wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 9:42 pm I may be the only normie on here that uses Nano. I've tried learning Vim, but boy is it hard to understand sometimes. It's twisted my brain up into a ball of electrical wire, dangerous enough for probably a maggot of some sort.
I've used it, and I got along with pico for a long time back in the day. I know that nano could be quite powerful compared to pico, but I haven't bothered to learn how to make it be.
User avatar
knghtbrd
Posts: 40
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:56 am

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by knghtbrd »

Solomoriah wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 11:14 pm Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I learned the Tao of Unix on a Tandy Model 16b running XENIX, specifically the earlier version based on System III. My choices for full screen editor:

1. VI
2. there is no number 2.
But ed is the standard editor! You don't reach for a "viitor" or an "emacsitor" or even a "nanoitor". No, you want an editor! Anything more is bloat for people who probably use Gnome…

I mean, I do have pretty good proficiency with it. And when TERM=basic … it's pretty much all you've got.
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Solomoriah »

I can use ed. It hurts, though.
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
Distorted Humor
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:40 pm

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Distorted Humor »

Been using Suse/OpenSuse for 20 some odd years now. Along with windows machines.
Shortstop
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:27 am

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Shortstop »

Emacs is better than Vim. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about, or can't handle the truth.
Shortstop
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:27 am

Re: Linux and UNIX and command lines (oh my!)

Post by Shortstop »

sean8223 wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 8:50 pm Xubuntu checking in -- the whole snap thing in the new release is a major annoyance (especially with Firefox) but not enough yet to make me look for another distribution. If it can run emacs I'm good! On servers, Debian all the way.
Yeah buddy. Sean gets it. As long as a distro has Firefox, latest Emacs (even by compiling from source) and same defaults with networking and volume handled through easy ways (lightweight DE or even Openbox with small applets), I'm down.

This is coming from someone who has used:
Lubuntu > Debian > Gentoo > Fedora > Manjaro , and now just Mint.

Mint kicks ass. Only Manjaro has been that nice with defaults that are just same by default. I hate fighting with machines as I get older. I just want shit to work.

Other than Mint on the laptop, using Ubuntu Studio on the desktop and Ubuntu Server on the other spare beater desktop
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot] and 36 guests