84 results for Unix · 2.318s

News for “Unix”
20 results • 2311 ms server time
Thoughts on Unix vs WindowsIMAGE
news.ycombinator.com• Feb 17, 2012• 1 min read
Thoughts on Unix vs WindowsI'm a .NET developer of 8 years and am walking away from opportunities paying $1000/day at the moment, with plans to move away to Unix for my own products later this year, because deep down I feel increasingly uncomfortable with Windows, although I can't pin down exactly why.Any comments/corrections welcome on my below attempt to understand differences based on my limited experience. I especially welcome any thoughts in areas where Windows is perceived stronger as a server-side operating system, because I can't think of any. Are there any startups here building on Windows Server? I know this shouldn't be a big deal, but I can't shake off the feeling that it is. Flexibility (Unix +1) Unix can be installed on more types of computers In future, this could be something as small as a watch large as a supercomputer sophisticated as a robot innovative as a new CPU Scalability (Unix +1) Managing 100 servers would be easy using Unix Can SSH into systems quickly via terminal Could even automate
Moozonian News
news.ycombinator.com• Jul 31, 2026• 1 min read
A 1989 Unix finger protocol prank at UW-MilwaukeeIn 1989, as a CS undergrad at UW-Milwaukee, I had access to a graduate Unix lab. One afternoon, the grad students discovered they could scan the network for users who had accidentally left their .plan files world-writable. For the uninitiated, the finger command let you see who was logged in, and it displayed their local .plan file. Because default security permissions were incredibly relaxed back then, you could sometimes write directly to someone else's file. The grad students wrote a script to append a snarky message mocking the users' permissions: "I AM FAR MOR THAN AN IGNORANT MORON..." Later that night, the lab cleared out. Left to my own devices, curiosity got the better of me. I ran a similar scan to see if any open files were left. I found one, and the user’s login name immediately caught my eye: "beaver". The temptation was simply too great. I opened their file and wrote the only logical sentence:"If you are reading this, then you are fingering the beaver!" After literally fa
Advertisement
Moozonian News
github.com• Jun 30, 2026• 1 min read
Show HN: AI Agents the Unix Way – built with bash, curl, and jqWhile working on an educational exercise tinkering with local models and trying my hand at setting up agents, I went down a rabbit hole: to see how far I could build a custom agent loop using exclusively command-line building blocks and stripping out dependencies wherever possible.It turns out you can get pretty far with pipes, text streams, append only logs, and standard command-line components - concepts pretty well aligned with classic Unix philosophy. The agent is a wrapper composed of a handful of smaller programs, which should allow for flexibly injecting various tool to inspect, filter, redirect, and audit different stages of the agent loop.This project as it stands is a proof-of-concept, but packs enough punch with tool calling support - which in theory should make it indefinitely extensible. With that said, it does appear that the sophistication of tool calling is largely limited by the underlying model, and so far I’ve only experimented with lightweight local models (e.g. lla
Advertisement
Moozonian News
news.ycombinator.com• Jul 14, 2025• 1 min read
Did early Unix shells ever use `chd` command to change directories?I've been exploring early Unix systems, particularly *Unix V0 on the PDP-7* and its successor, *Unix V1 on the PDP-11*, using the SIMH emulator.Interestingly, one of the most common modern shell commands, `cd`, did *not* exist in these early versions.- In *Unix V0*, directory changes were done via a shell command called `ch`, used in combination with a special directory called `dd`（directory directory）. For example, to enter Ken's home directory, one would type `ch dd ken`. This seems to reflect that a full hierarchical file structure hadn't been implemented yet. I've verified this behavior in the SIMH emulator.- In *Unix V1*, the method becomes more familiar: you use `chdir /usr/ken`, though still *not* `cd`. This is also verified on SIMH. Dennis Ritchie mentioned in _"The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System"_:> "Incidentally, _chdir_ was spelled _ch_; why this was expanded when we went to the PDP-11 I don't remember."Now here's where it gets curious:While reading the [Unix V0 s
Advertisement
Moozonian News
github.com• Mar 27, 2025• 1 min read
Show HN: Reproducible,Unix-Like,84KB FOSS tasks alternative that respects youKarui is a lightweight (84KB) to-do list android app with a Unix-inspired aesthetic, using AlpineJS. My goal was simple: create a privacy-friendly app that isn't bloated with too many dependencies, or unnecessary complexity, make it as light as possible while it still fits my usecase, have a terminal-esque design so it stands out from others, and add tons of themes so that you can waste time changing themes of your todolist as much as you do changing themes of your code editor.The project started as I tried polishing a really old android app from android 4.4.2 which had its code on Github under GPLv3 license. But the app just wont build. I walked into some forums with questions, got rejected from some (the question was listed as too niche), but in the end the app won't build. Still it was an interesting observation. Even if the source is available, if you can't run it without closed-source dependencies, is it really free?But it was a gateway to looking into how to make a truly free sof
Moozonian News
bing.com• Nov 4, 2019• 1 min read
Will The Real UNIX Please Stand Up?Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at a PDP-11. Peter Hamer [CC BY-SA 2.0] Last week the computing world celebrated an important anniversary: the UNIX operating system turned 50 years old. What was ...