On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> wrote: > >> > But OSTree is much more flexible than traditional block replication >> > because: >> It is very unlike the unix philosophy to need a lot of ways to do >> something. Why isn't there one tool that does it right in the first >> place - and can work appropriately for 2 systems the same as 2,000? > > > What Unix philosophy or religion? Ken Thompson's. > The whole 'one tool does one thing' is not > what Unix has ever been.. it is a rosy glasses view forgetting all the > arguments over whether awk+sed+sh or sh+sed+awk or special program G was the > best way to solve a problem. Which gets down to the fundamental issue. > Humans are not lock step creatures.. they will think differently and see > different ways to solve a problem and the universe is complex enough that it > works so much that people get frustrated with each other because they would > like just one way to do things (their way). That's a good description of what has kept unix out of the mainstream for decades. I can understand having all the different incompatible flavors when the driving force was the attempt to lock users of the commercial versions in with their own different minor extensions, but it doesn't make any sense in the free/reusable software world. It's not that I want something that works 'my' way, it is that I want something that I can learn once - or train staff to do once, not monthly. And I want it to work the same way for 2 machines as for thousands, and without rebuilding a bunch of supporting infrastructure every time someone has a different idea. Is that too much to ask? Why does every change have to make you throw out your existing knowledge and infrastructure instead of just fixing the small remaining problems? -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com