alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure anyone invoking "classic Unix" is pining for modem noise or line printers, though that seems to be how you're interpreting it. That’s more a caricature of early computing than what defines the Unix philosophy or what NetBSD preserves.
When I say classic Unix, I really mean "simple software":
- Text-first, scriptable interfaces where tools do one thing well and can be composed
- Human-readable configuration in plain files, no XML or opaque binary blobs
- Predictable, minimal system design where you can understand what’s happening under the hood without chasing abstraction layers
- Manual pages that matter, and a userspace that favors understanding over wizard-driven opacity
- A system that’s BSD-like in spirit: clean, coherent, documented, and built by people who care more about correctness and clarity than flash or trends
This is in contrast to modern Linux distributions where systems are often a tangled mess of systemd units, layers of more or less obscure daemons and processes, unpredictable behaviors, and YAML/JSON/XML-based abstractions that sit between you and the actual system.
So no, I'm not glorifying the past or pretending users in 2025 would enjoy a serial terminal setup from 1984. I’m saying that a clean, simple, consistent, modular Unix, in the traditional sense, is still valuable and NetBSD is one of the few OSes that still embodies that ethos.
Replies
> a tangled mess of systemd units
Ironic you use that term when a number of systemd units is often the simplest way of cleanly, reliably orchestrating services and daemons, doubly so when theres any level of complexity or limitations you want to confine one too.
Its cute to romanticize a bunch of scripts to run and orchestrate things but its a nightmare I'd not wish upon my enemies. Less moving parts, yet conceptually more complex to properly manage beyond the basics with far more that can and likely will go wrong.
I agree with that. Modern Unix is a 6-of-one-half-dozen-of-another type situation. Yes, terminal emulators and the termcap database are improved. But now, the traditional Unix user might be surprised at how things are done. I have accepted that ... systemd ... manages my networking now (ok, it's networkd or something I guess?). But if you can't accept that, it's good to have some option that just uses ifconfig.
> Text-first, scriptable interfaces where tools do one thing well and can be composed
emacs
> Human-readable configuration in plain files, no XML or opaque binary blobs
emacs
> Predictable, minimal system design where you can understand what’s happening under the hood without chasing abstraction layers
Maybe emacs
> Manual pages that matter, and a userspace that favors understanding over wizard-driven opacity
Probably emacs. Do I care about man when there is info?
That romanticizes a vision of Unix that hasn't existed for like four decades, aside from maybe Xenix bitty boxes from Radio Shack servicing two terminals in auto shops, video stores, and the like. People bought Unix workstation and server systems specifically to run large, complex applications. Applications that did many things and kept their configuration in binary blobs or XML files. Stability, security, comprehensiveness, and ease of administration are stronger selling points for these systems than simplicity.
As an example of how comprehensive beats simple in the real world, consider Microsoft Outlook. Not just email, but calendaring and contact management. Microsoft's engineers discovered that in the business world, these things go together and bundled them into one, well-integrated program. Outlook ate everybody's lunch, including Windows-based mail clients like Eudora. Integration with Exchange let these services be provided together on an organizational level, fully integrated with Active Directory, and Exchange came to dominate email server deployments over Unix-based solutions which were more piecemeal. Easier to administrate as well.
NetBSD is a fantastic tinkerer's operating system, one of the most hackable ones out there. But let's not kid ourselves here. The philosophy it supposedly embodies hasn't really served real needs in a long time, if ever. Customers want solutions, not hacks held together with shell and Perl scripts.