On 2026-03-12, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 3/12/26 09:00, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 3/12/26 08:21, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

This article

<https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/command-line-wizardry-part-
two-variables-and-loops-in-bash/>

I took the time to look more closely into that link above.

It's a... curious article, the first part of it seems to want to explain
some operations with variables by repeatedly stating that the syntax is "unsettling".

Besides the whole thing about relegating bash to some place where it's
only used as an interactive command interpreter and where it's not a
"real language"

®If you need to write a script for repeated use?particularly one
with significant logical branching and evaluation?I strongly
recommend a ?real language? instead of Bash.¯

®Although the switch back and forth between referencing hello and
$hello is deeply unsettling if you?re only familiar with ?real?
languages,[...]¯

This is silly, I mean, one of the key strengths of UNIX shells is that
you can use them to write scripts. In fact, these might be more suitable
tools for some operations...

continues the author?s intro to basic command-line concepts. But it
repeats a failing I see all too often in shell scripting: [...]

Not only "a [one] failing"; it's full of bad coding practices!
(I suggest to abstain from it.)

Right. I can only agree with you.

The more general problem is that there's so much stuff about shell
programming on the web but most of it is sadly of very bad quality.

It's exactly a paragon for the said many sources of bad quality.

I liked the detail near the end where it's apparently *echo* that gets
rid of the whitespace in the argument, and not the shell's word
splitting.

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-14 12:07, Nuno Silva wrote:

<https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/command-line-wizardry-part-
two-variables-and-loops-in-bash/>

I took the time to look more closely into that link above.

It's a... curious article, the first part of it seems to want to explain
some operations with variables by repeatedly stating that the syntax is "unsettling".

Besides the whole thing about relegating bash to some place where it's
only used as an interactive command interpreter and where it's not a
"real language"

®If you need to write a script for repeated use?particularly one
with significant logical branching and evaluation?I strongly
recommend a ?real language? instead of Bash.¯

®Although the switch back and forth between referencing hello and
$hello is deeply unsettling if you?re only familiar with ?real?
languages,[...]¯

I see you wasted your time reading all the gory details. :-)

Your quotes show that the article is even worse than I thought.
The author obviously an ignorant, probably self-educated fellow.

Sadly, the world seems to get filled with such "experts". - So
we might be lucky if the AIs will replace most of them soon. :-/
(No, I'm just sarcastic.)

This is silly, I mean, one of the key strengths of UNIX shells is that
you can use them to write scripts. In fact, these might be more suitable tools for some operations...

> continues the author?s intro to basic command-line concepts. But it
> repeats a failing I see all too often in shell scripting: [...]

Not only "a [one] failing"; it's full of bad coding practices!
(I suggest to abstain from it.)

Right. I can only agree with you.

The more general problem is that there's so much stuff about shell
programming on the web but most of it is sadly of very bad quality.

It's exactly a paragon for the said many sources of bad quality.

I liked the detail near the end where it's apparently *echo* that gets
rid of the whitespace in the argument, and not the shell's word
splitting.

I'm not sure what specific part you have in mind. - Close to the
end I see for example

echo zfs destroy \"$snap\"

A form with escapes that I'd never had written that way.

There's a lot other things of arguable quality; pipelines with three
greps and a sed, for example. Or unnecessary escapes after the pipe
symbol. Or using shell's 'while' loop where other tools process such
data better. - Not all those things are critical in any way, but I
also wouldn't call them the most sophisticated approach. - But then
we also see recommended patterns he used (like 'IFS= read -r').

And the same author advertises at the end another article of him:
"Learn to think in sed, awk, and grep". But he fails to make use e.g.
of awk in his zfs-multi-grep-loop command pipelines.

Janis


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-14, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 2026-03-14 12:07, Nuno Silva wrote:

The more general problem is that there's so much stuff about shell
programming on the web but most of it is sadly of very bad quality.

It's exactly a paragon for the said many sources of bad quality.

I liked the detail near the end where it's apparently *echo* that gets
rid of the whitespace in the argument, and not the shell's word
splitting.

I'm not sure what specific part you have in mind. - Close to the
end I see for example

echo zfs destroy \"$snap\"

A form with escapes that I'd never had written that way.

In the section before that, I think.

It's the last paragraph before the code block(s) before the heading
"Putting it all together":

®One last note: echo itself will mangle leading spaces, so if you
just echo $x instead of echo "$x" (note the quotation marks), you?ll
see stripped leading and trailing spaces, even though the content of
the variable itself isn?t stripped. This is the very devil to figure
out if you don?t already know what?s going on!¯

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/14/26 18:34, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2026-03-14, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 2026-03-14 12:07, Nuno Silva wrote:

The more general problem is that there's so much stuff about shell
programming on the web but most of it is sadly of very bad quality.

It's exactly a paragon for the said many sources of bad quality.

I liked the detail near the end where it's apparently *echo* that gets
rid of the whitespace in the argument, and not the shell's word
splitting.

I'm not sure what specific part you have in mind. - Close to the
end I see for example

echo zfs destroy \"$snap\"

A form with escapes that I'd never had written that way.

In the section before that, I think.

It's the last paragraph before the code block(s) before the heading
"Putting it all together":

®One last note: echo itself will mangle leading spaces, so if you
just echo $x instead of echo "$x" (note the quotation marks), you?ll
see stripped leading and trailing spaces, even though the content of
the variable itself isn?t stripped. This is the very devil to figure
out if you don?t already know what?s going on!¯

Unless this is a 'self-ed' project, just use Python.

Copy/Paste stuff from online BASH examples for small
needs.

I've done kinda long Bash scripts in the past, but
can't rec doing so today.

C-Shell is maybe a little more interesting, as it
kinda-sorta has a 'C' look and feel. Indeed it
is one of the things that first attracted me to
the Unix/Linux world.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/15/26 00:55, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:14:50 -0400, c186282 wrote:

C-Shell is maybe a little more interesting, as it kinda-sorta has a
'C' look and feel. Indeed it is one of the things that first
attracted me to the Unix/Linux world.

My preference was tcsh, but in the early '90s bash conquered the Linux domain.

It did.

But that doesn't make it "best" :-)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-15, Stefan Ram wrote:

Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:

®One last note: echo itself will mangle leading spaces,

When you input "echo $x", the shell substitutes "$x" by the value of
x with leading and trailing spaces stripped. The shell, not echo!

Indeed. Sounds like the kind of thing to explain properly in a
tutorial. The actual explanation might actually be less complex or
confusing (or surprising) than this.

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <oaGcnU0J4P_H-iv0nZ2dnZfqn_adnZ2d@giganews.com>,
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

On 3/15/26 00:55, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:14:50 -0400, c186282 wrote:

C-Shell is maybe a little more interesting, as it kinda-sorta has a
'C' look and feel. Indeed it is one of the things that first
attracted me to the Unix/Linux world.

My preference was tcsh, but in the early '90s bash conquered the Linux
domain.

It did.

But that doesn't make it "best" :-)

Actually, it does. But being "the best" doesn't mean it is any good.

And, the thing is, this last applies to a lot of things in life. People
will say "Our system is the best" and they are right, only because, unfortunately, no one has yet found anything better. But that doesn't mean that system is any good, and, in fact, often it is really lousy.

Disclaimer: I actually think bash is a pretty good and useful tool/shell/language, but it does have a lot of, um, er, quirks.

--
I'll give him credit for one thing: He is (& will be) the most quotable President
ever. Books have been written about (GW) Bushisms, but Dubya's got nothing on Trump.

Tremendously wet - from the standpoint of water.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15/03/2026 08:01, c186282 wrote:

On 3/15/26 00:55, rbowman wrote:

My preference was tcsh, but in the early '90s bash conquered the Linux
domain.

ÿ It did.

ÿ But that doesn't make it "best"ÿ :-)

Ah, that's deep philosophy.

Survival not of the best and fittest, but just the ones that happened to
be in the right place at the right time...



--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15/03/2026 12:30, Kenny McCormack wrote:

But that doesn't make it "best" ?

Actually, it does. But being "the best" doesn't mean it is any good.

And, the thing is, this last applies to a lot of things in life. People
will say "Our system is the best" and they are right, only because, unfortunately, no one has yet found anything better. But that doesn't mean that system is any good, and, in fact, often it is really lousy.

Indeed.

What survives the vagaries of Existence? is...that which survives the
vagaries of existence...so far, anyway.

--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <10p5peb$uf3i$1@dont-email.me>,
Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-03-15, Stefan Ram wrote:

Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:

One last note: echo itself will mangle leading spaces,

When you input "echo $x", the shell substitutes "$x" by the value of
x with leading and trailing spaces stripped. The shell, not echo!

Indeed. Sounds like the kind of thing to explain properly in a
tutorial. The actual explanation might actually be less complex or
confusing (or surprising) than this.

The funny thing is that even though the explanation is wrong on technical grounds, on many levels (which I won't enumerate here), the fact is that *functionally*, it is actually OK. I.e., if a low level programmer is
looking for a way to print out a string with leading and trailing spaces removed, this is one (not very good, but let's not get into that) way to do
it.

I think that that's the bar that a lot of these "tutorials" are aiming for.

--
To be evangelical is to spend every waking moment hovering around
two emotional states: fear and rage. Evangelicals are seriously the
angriest and most vicious bunch of self-pitying, constantly-moaning
whinybutts I've ever encountered.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <n1ok43FkshvU8@mid.individual.net>,
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:30:16 -0000 (UTC), Kenny McCormack wrote:

Disclaimer: I actually think bash is a pretty good and useful
tool/shell/language, but it does have a lot of, um, er, quirks.

The biggest thing I hit was my tcsh aliases had to be converted to >functions.

Yeah, aliases in bash are a real foo-up, because they can't (meaningfully)
take parameters. It would have been better (IMHO) not to have had them in
the language at all. Note that the syntax for accessing alias parameters
in [t]csh is totally weird, but it does work.

(This next comment is left general/non-specific; there's a lot I could say
in the way of details/examples, but I haven't the inclination at the moment
to do so)
The implementation of arrays, and specifically associative arrays, is full
of gotchas. It does all work, but it feels like a landmine. Lots of "pitfalls".

Mind you, I am not singling bash out; I understand the reasons why it is
the way it is, and it is still my scripting language of choice. But I find
it annoying when I hit a landmine...

--
"You can safely assume that you have created God in your own image when
it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." -- Anne Lamott


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/15/26 16:44, rbowman wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2026 04:01:10 -0400, c186282 wrote:

On 3/15/26 00:55, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:14:50 -0400, c186282 wrote:

C-Shell is maybe a little more interesting, as it kinda-sorta has >>>> a 'C' look and feel. Indeed it is one of the things that first
attracted me to the Unix/Linux world.

My preference was tcsh, but in the early '90s bash conquered the Linux
domain.

It did.

But that doesn't make it "best" :-)

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is 'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.' The x86 architecture wasn't the
best either, but here we are.

Sometimes it's "fittest", sometimes just because
whatever is the Neato New Popular Thing and just
becomes entrenched.

Bash is just fine for what it was intended to be,
more or less as good as the other shells. CSH/TCSH
do have the advantage or their 'C'- like look and
feel, which might make it easier for other-world
'C' programmers to feel at home with. ZSH has some
plusses too.

I know there are a few in these groups who feel that
writing a 3000 line Bash script is the preferable
way to do almost anything in -IX ... but, come ON now !
Bash has been added to and added to - each time using
weirder syntactic tricks to squeeze in added functionality.
Unless you commit a LOT of time to becoming a Bash guru,
well ...

Biggest thing I ever wrote in Bash was a version of
my company backup plan, about 600 active lines. However
the job was kind of 'modular' so I could copy and slightly
tweak the backup sections above. It worked fine, but
was very annoying to mod. Went back to a Python,
then Pascal, version.

As for CPUs ... I still think the 68000 was the 'most
beautiful'. I did see some articles saying how upgrade
to the more modern multi-core+ shit would have required
a seriously major redesign. All you'd have was a kinda
fake version, using the familiar op-codes. IBM ensured
the '86 chips would be more popular, so Motorola decided
it wasn't worth the money to seriously redesign.

Maybe this is one of those cases were "more popular"
translated into an undeserved "best" ? Paradise lost.

Today the best 'shell' lang is Python, hands down.
Hell, even M$ started sneaking in Python stuff WAY,
back ... Vista at least, maybe even XP (been too
long to remember).


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 01:48, rbowman wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:36:31 -0400, c186282 wrote:

Biggest thing I ever wrote in Bash was a version of my company

backup

plan, about 600 active lines. However the job was kind of 'modular'
so I could copy and slightly tweak the backup sections above. It
worked fine, but was very annoying to mod. Went back to a Python,
then Pascal, version.

All I've ever done w.r.t bash is tweaks to .bashrc. By the time I reluctantly moved to bash I was already using Python for most tasks.
Didn't need to learn a new shell.

Worked out well for you !

I got into Linux back when RH/Slack/OSu came on 5-1/4
disks at the superstore. Don't think Python existed yet.
If you wanted a 'script' then you did it in Bash or
one of the others.

Fortunately I skipped Py2 ... kept hearing Py3 was
coming out and would be kind-of different. Why learn
the 'wrong way' ?

I stumble into enough unwanted learning experiences. I install Damn Small Linux in a VM on the Fedora box. No problem. The terminal is URxvt

and the

damn thing was semi-transparent. .Xresources includes a file down
the .config rathole that had transparent set to false. However there's
also a 'shade' that was set to 50 which apparently means

half-transparent.

0 did the trick. It also gives you a choice of Fluxbox or JWM.

I always use LXDE or XFCE ... and both use LightDM.
Makes it easy to do auto-login on work boxes and
you can set SOME video junk in there. The options,
mostly commented out, DO come with a good one-liner
doc that explains each one. Of course X lies below,
like a shark.

Config files CAN be good - or HELL. All kinds of
weird, often poorly/non-documented stuff in them.
The X system is a particular pain. I still remember
trying to get original X in RH to see my monitor,
KB and mouse ... took a couple days of fooling
around, sometimes shooting in the dark. Was younger
then however ...

Several years back I installed MX on a laptop - and
the screen was nearly black. There was no GUI gadget
for it. Most of the advice said to set one thing, but
it got reset on every reboot. FINALLY found an
obscure undocumented line WAY deep down in the files,
a config imported by another config. Just hateful.

In theory it IS still better than the M$ "We know
what's best for you" approach.

DSL has gotten fatter since its reboot and is up to 900 MB which still
isn't bad in the time of 4 GB+ isos.

My original DSL wasn't terrible, version 2 could
sometimes get to 20mbs. My 'new and improved'
5G thingie almost never gets to 20mbs, 15 is about
the top almost all the time, under 10 more common.

On the other hand it IS cheaper, and since I don't
stream 8k movies.

Right NOW ... fast.com sez I get 8.0mbs, 11 with the
re-test. Wow, 33 on a later re-test !!! That won't
last. Got used to gigabit at ye olde office alas,
download three distros at the same time and they'd
be done before you could hit the head ... :-)



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is 'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.' The x86 architecture wasn't the
best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct (yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.


--
Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper
name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating
or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of
the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead. They must
face it, then decide whether this is what they want or not.

Ayn Rand.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is 'survival of
anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86 architecture wasn't the
best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct (yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

50 million years of dinosaurs !

It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of
anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86 architecture wasn't the
best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

ÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?


--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86
architecture wasn't the best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

Nearer 168M years!

ÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 07:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86
architecture wasn't the best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

Nearer 168M years!

ÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

Anything big that could not eat carrion and hide or fly well was extincted but some
ancient lineages survived because they could hide underground and eat
carrion. Such are our antecedents. Very small mammalian animals like
rats or mice survived. So did
a lot of pesky insects and birds and small burrowing reptiles,
amphibians and worms.
Plants whose seeds were in the ground survived as well to grow back as
trees and the
rest.

bliss

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16/03/2026 14:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

But not nearly as much as 100ppm of atmospheric CO2, allegedly...

--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
- George Orwell


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16/03/2026 14:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

It's amazing that the meteor missed the visitor centre in AZ ;)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 11:03, Richard Harnden wrote:

On 16/03/2026 14:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

It's amazing that the meteor missed the visitor centre in AZ ;)

That meteor in Arizona was small next to the big one in the Yucatan peninsula. But the visitor center in Arizona was saved by time. ;^)

bliss

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16/03/2026 18:03, Richard Harnden wrote:

On 16/03/2026 14:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

It's amazing that the meteor missed the visitor centre in AZ ;)

It's the Will Of God
--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
- George Orwell


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 12:44, rbowman wrote:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:11:30 -0400, c186282 wrote:

I got into Linux back when RH/Slack/OSu came on 5-1/4 disks at the
superstore. Don't think Python existed yet.
If you wanted a 'script' then you did it in Bash or one of the
others.

Python predates Linux by a little although it was way behind Perl in popularity. Python 2 came out in 2000. Red Hat Linux not only included the infamous gcc 2.96 that couldn't compile the kernel and a Python version
that broke existing scripts. As I've said, it took me 25 years to give
Fedora a chance.

Fortunately I skipped Py2 ... kept hearing Py3 was coming out and
would be kind-of different. Why learn the 'wrong way' ?

The Esri Desktop installation included Python 2, which they started to use
as VBA faded away. ActiveState Python was also useful since it had Win32 extensions. I did have to do some rework for Python 3. It wasn't as bad
as some of the other transitions like Angular.js to Angular. It didn't
affect me but Visual Basic to VB.NET was a real mess.

Config files CAN be good - or HELL. All kinds of weird, often
poorly/non-documented stuff in them.
The X system is a particular pain. I still remember trying to get
original X in RH to see my monitor,
KB and mouse ... took a couple days of fooling around, sometimes
shooting in the dark. Was younger then however ...

I don't have a problem with config files, either the old ini style or the newer xml or JSON types but I wasn't familiar with rxvt. I tweak xterm
in .Xresources but in this case another config where most of the work is
done is included in .Xresourcces like your MX. Hopefully the hack for the
vim cursor in xterm also works.

> DSL has gotten fatter since its reboot and is up to 900 MB which
> still isn't bad in the time of 4 GB+ isos.
My original DSL wasn't terrible, version 2 could sometimes get to
20mbs. My 'new and improved'
5G thingie almost never gets to 20mbs, 15 is about the top almost all
the time, under 10 more common.

DSL -- Damn Small Linux. I don't know anything about the other DSL. afaik
it never made it past the city line and didn't even have total coverage in town.

A man who administers our SF-LUG mailing list help put together
Damned Small Linux. That is San Francisco Linux Users Group by the way.
It was
very handy in the days of CD drives because you could tuck it in a
pocket from
a 3.5 inch CD and run a computer sometimes fixing the base system. I never used it for that but others did. I used Knoppix on a 5.25 inch CD to remove
a Windows password once or twice that was Knoppix 3.4 I believe. I got it
with a laarge paperback Knoppix for Dummies or some such title at a
Borders Book Store. In the early 2000s.

Digital Subscriber Lines depend on proximaty to a Telephone exchange and
I am fortunate enough to have picked an apartment before the Internet in the 1960s and 1970s about half a mile from the local exchange. I knew nothing abour computers then because they were big expensive room-sized devices that private citizens could not afford. Maybe we had so-called
Mini-Computers no
larger than a desk but I did not know much about them then.

I learned that you could use them to write books from a famous SF author from a column in Analog SF magazine. He was using CPM which
was not a cheap thing at the time. A friend of mine was building a computer
in her bedroom and when I asked her how large a computer was needed
to do word processing and she said 64 Kilobytes so that was CPM as well.
When i surveyed the field of affordable in the 1980s I decided that the Commodore 64 was the best for me.
From there eventually to the AmigaOS then on to Mandriva LInux in 2006.

Best choices i ever made aside from those I do not discuss.
bliss





--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-16, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

I learned that you could use them to write books from a famous SF author from a column in Analog SF magazine. He was using CPM which
was not a cheap thing at the time.

Sounds like Jerry Pournelle. His regular Byte column was fun to read,
at least until it turned into an endless account of trying to get
Windows boxes to work. He gave each of his computers a name; the
IBM PC was called Lucy because he found that, like the Peanuts comic
strip character, it was quite a fussbudget.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 17:24, rbowman wrote:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:29:49 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

I used Knoppix on a 5.25 inch CD to remove a Windows password once or
twice that was Knoppix 3.4, I believe. I got it with a laarge paperback
Knoppix for Dummies or some such title at a Borders Book Store. In the
early 2000s.

Knoppix is still around. Like Tails I don't think you can install it so I can't play with it is a VM.

A Knoppix install gives you a Debian or used to do that. It is best as a Live DVD
or a Flash Drive. Every so often I go to Knopper's site and make sure
that I have the
most current but not much new lately since he wrote his own
initialization program to
avoid systemd.

I had a ot more energy before I turned 65 but since then 23 years I no longer
install much, but my basic PCLinuxOS keeps me busy.

bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2026.03- Linux 6.12.76 pclos1- KDE
Plasma 6.6.2

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 10:21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of
anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86 architecture wasn't the >>>> best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

ÿÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?

Probably something LIKE that ... the birdies could
fly all over looking for bits to eat. The landlubbers
couldn't.

Still ... random chance ... you'd expect a bit more
of SUCH a prolific biological branch to persist.
Reptiles/amphibians/mammals sure did. Something kinda
weird about that.

Alas, 50 million years and NO pyramids or tablets
inscribed with Saurian wisdom ... and yea, higher
tech societies leave a huge chem/artifact signature
that WOULD last 65 million years. Ain't found it.

It appears that 'intelligence' is NOT very much
selected for. Big nasty pointy teeth, yea.

Now if the dinos just had Linux ..... :-)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 10:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86
architecture wasn't the best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

Nearer 168M years!

Depends on def of 'dinosaur'. There were 'family'
going back that far ... but the ones WE usually
think of were of later origin - Jurassic/Triassic.

Anyway - no cities, no pyramids, no tablets, no
industrial waste ... 168 million years of NO GAIN.

"Intelligence" is SERIOUSLY ABNORMAL in the DarwinVerse.

ÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

But ALL the Dinos went out - SUCH a numerous/diverse
base. Big ones, medium ones, little ones ... ALL gone.
Reptiles survived. Amphibians survived. Mammals survived.
Crabs and octopi too.

So, what's up here ???


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 14:03, Richard Harnden wrote:

On 16/03/2026 14:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

It's amazing that the meteor missed the visitor centre in AZ ;)

Continental drift :-)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 15:49, rbowman wrote:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:06:43 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is 'survival
of anything not too screwed up to live.' The x86 architecture wasn't
the best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

When I lived in New Hampshire there was a place in one of the bays where I could catch horseshoe crabs by hand. It was strictly catch and release; I only wanted to look at an extremely successful design up close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab

They ARE one of the most successful evolutionary
products. Ugly, but ultra-functional.

By VOLUME though, look at ants and things like
clams/shellfish some insects and especially bacteria.

Frankly, if a space alien probe zooms by Earth, it
will report "Entirely single-celled life with just
a tiny smattering of multi-cellular forms".


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/16/26 20:36, rbowman wrote:

On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:02:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-03-16, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

I learned that you could use them to write books from a famous SF
author from a column in Analog SF magazine. He was using CPM which was
not a cheap thing at the time.

Sounds like Jerry Pournelle. His regular Byte column was fun to read,
at least until it turned into an endless account of trying to get
Windows boxes to work. He gave each of his computers a name; the IBM PC
was called Lucy because he found that, like the Peanuts comic strip
character, it was quite a fussbudget.

I miss him and I also miss the era when Byte was more hardware oriented
with Ciacia's column. iirc he thought the sun rose on WordPerfect.

I kept buying Circuit Cellar mag until the very end.

You can find all the old Byte mags online ... though
the reader isn't especially friendly.

Damn Small Linux includes quite a few lightweight applications, one of
which is AbiWord. I don't have a use for a word processor but that one is more my speed than LibreOffice, OpenOffice, or OneOffice. I did use
WordStar since it was bundled on a CP/M machine and was better that vi
(the real Bill Joy vi).

DSL is a good idea - right to the point without all
the gloss and BS. Slitaz is kind of in the same zone,
but it's a bit of a challenge to permanently install
it these days.

WordStar and close clones WERE good. Again, simple and
to the point. 99.999% of the time you don't NEED a
damned typesetting app.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-17, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

On 3/16/26 10:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 16/03/2026 13:52, c186282 wrote:

On 3/16/26 09:06, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/03/2026 20:44, rbowman wrote:

In a larger view I think 'survival of the fittest' really is
'survival of anything not too screwed up to live.'ÿ The x86
architecture wasn't the best either, but here we are.

Yes. The world is comprised of things that haven't become extinct
(yet)...

A million years of dinosaurs and now just jackdaws.

ÿ 50 million years of dinosaurs !

I stand corrected...

Nearer 168M years!

Depends on def of 'dinosaur'. There were 'family'
going back that far ... but the ones WE usually
think of were of later origin - Jurassic/Triassic.

Anyway - no cities, no pyramids, no tablets, no
industrial waste ... 168 million years of NO GAIN.

"Intelligence" is SERIOUSLY ABNORMAL in the DarwinVerse.

ÿ It IS odd how all but the birdy side of the
ÿ entire line disappeared so completely. Hey,
ÿ maybe it was space alien 'big game hunters' !

They fell through cracks in reality that the birds flew over?

I gather than most of the birds and rather a lot of mammals went exinct
too. A 10km asteroid will really mess a planet up.

But ALL the Dinos went out - SUCH a numerous/diverse
base. Big ones, medium ones, little ones ... ALL gone.
Reptiles survived. Amphibians survived. Mammals survived.
Crabs and octopi too.

So, what's up here ???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHMZ5qWBxr0

(I saw these guys af a folk festival once. Good fun.)

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/17/26 14:13, rbowman wrote:

On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:18:35 -0400, c186282 wrote:

I kept buying Circuit Cellar mag until the very end.

What end?

https://circuitcellar.com/

I let my subscription lapse but should pick it up again. I had a big stack
of back issues and figured I'd get around to them when I retired. Most of
the stuff is history now, PIC vs. AVR and so forth.

Well, "The End" was when Steve bowed-out - and
I think there was a slight break in publication.
SOMEWHERE I have the 'farewell' mag in the pile.

Alas, 'the tech' has become much different now.
Steve always said his favorite programming
language was 'solder'. Today the tech is two
or three levels more complex, all ICs. With
the ultra-shrinking of chips now Normal Humans
can't even do-it-yourself. 3mm thru-hole is
about the practical limit even for younger
eyes and hands (did a bunch of those, Dremel
drill-press and micro-bits and pointy irons).

Oh, circuitcellar.com ... the front page seems to
be little but ads for various semiconductor corps
and the 'home' page mostly "news" rather than mostly
of 'how-to' stuff. Is SOME how-too ... using a Pico
to watchdog local wifi. Of course ANY active box can
do that easily with a few lines of Bash ... don't
need a Pico. All of my boxes send simple stats every
10 minutes as-is.

Right now I have five 'active boxes' ... three
BMax/Beelink jobbies and two PIs mostly dedicated
to special needs that run 24/7.

Just got in a Pi3 ... and Day/Nite IR cam. This
will go into a weatherproof box. Pi3 because
they can handle at least one cam and 'motion'
while running cool enough so they don't need
fans or major vent. 4's/5's run too hot for
a small sealed plastic box.

Still have one blind spot on my property, this
Pi3 unit should fix that.

Commercial IP cam ? How BORING ! :-)

Anyway, won't subscribe to CC now. Not nearly
as useful as it was.



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 18/03/2026 18:19, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 03:00:08 -0400, c186282 wrote:

Alas, 'the tech' has become much different now.
Steve always said his favorite programming language was 'solder'.
Today the tech is two or three levels more complex, all ICs. With the
ultra-shrinking of chips now Normal Humans can't even do-it-yourself.
3mm thru-hole is about the practical limit even for younger eyes and
hands (did a bunch of those, Dremel drill-press and micro-bits and
pointy irons).

Soldering the headers on boards like the Pico if I screw up and order the headerless version is about the limit of my soldering abilities any more. Even for that I use a magnifier. I never even tried surface mount.

That's about where I stand too. 0.1" pitch I can just about handle

Solder paste, solder balls and hot air is above my pay grade

--
The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

Anon.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/18/26 14:19, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 03:00:08 -0400, c186282 wrote:

Alas, 'the tech' has become much different now.
Steve always said his favorite programming language was 'solder'.
Today the tech is two or three levels more complex, all ICs. With the
ultra-shrinking of chips now Normal Humans can't even do-it-yourself.
3mm thru-hole is about the practical limit even for younger eyes and
hands (did a bunch of those, Dremel drill-press and micro-bits and
pointy irons).

Soldering the headers on boards like the Pico if I screw up and order the headerless version is about the limit of my soldering abilities any more. Even for that I use a magnifier. I never even tried surface mount.

HAVE one of those magnifier headsets too :-)
It's hanging on a shelf three feet away ...

NEEDED it for the 3mm work.

Under 3mm ... forget it.

Really liked the Rabbit-2000 boards, GREAT ! However
by Rabbit-3000 they went to TOO TINY stuff, you could
not do much by hand any more. Tragic. Had to kinda
compensate with Ards. Not AS capable ... but you
could still DO stuff without robo-machinery or
mystery 3rd-party manufacturers who'd pirate your
CC number.

Anyway, I miss the "Steve Era" ... things were
more interesting/possible/fun then. Steve was
brilliant when it came to getting the most from
the least/simplest.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/18/26 14:29, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/03/2026 18:19, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 03:00:08 -0400, c186282 wrote:

ÿÿÿ Alas, 'the tech' has become much different now.
ÿÿÿ Steve always said his favorite programming language was 'solder'.
ÿÿÿ Today the tech is two or three levels more complex, all ICs. With
the
ÿÿÿ ultra-shrinking of chips now Normal Humans can't even do-it-
yourself.
ÿÿÿ 3mm thru-hole is about the practical limit even for younger eyes and >>> ÿÿÿ hands (did a bunch of those, Dremel drill-press and micro-bits and
ÿÿÿ pointy irons).

Soldering the headers on boards like the Pico if I screw up and order the
headerless version is about the limit of my soldering abilities any more.
Even for that I use a magnifier. I never even tried surface mount.

That's about where I stand too. 0.1" pitch I can just aboutÿ handle

Solder paste, solder balls and hot air is above my pay grade

Tried some of that ... sorry ... it's just
too much, too small, too big a PAIN. 3mm
through-hole is about IT for normal humans.

Fortunately the Ards and a few others still
have the human-addressable hardware headers.
"The Best" kind of depends on what you MEAN ...
and 'human-usable' figures into that a lot
for me. Judging by Ard/Pi sales, it means
a lot to a LOT of other people too.

Still have a kit for overlaying solder-paste
masks for SMDs ... used ONCE - and did NOT
love it. Yea, I understand the 'miniature'
thing, but ........

OTOH, CNC-style machines for milling/printing
circuit boards HAVE become much cheaper. Not
as clean as a Weller soldering iron, but they
maybe CAN get it done in some cases.

My old employer ... betcha they still have all
my corrosive stuff for etching circuit boards
in the box marked "toxic/hazardous" in the
back room somewhere ..... :-)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-19, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 23:30:29 -0400, c186282 wrote:

My old employer ... betcha they still have all my corrosive stuff for
etching circuit boards in the box marked "toxic/hazardous" in the
back room somewhere .....

Ferrous oxide? Stuff is evil.

FeO - hey, I just realized that in Spanish "feo" means "ugly".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)