Yes, or one of the forks.

break a lot of backwards compatibility or radically change the current way of doing things

Plan 9. We can still have textual interfaces without emulating the ancient use of teletypewriters.

The things I’ve read (admittedly mostly from the OpenBSD camp) from BSD devs, they seem to not worry about corporations building from their source that much, instead they actively try to get rid of GPL code because it isn’t permissive enough for their standards.

Theo wrote "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time.

But once the code is GPL’d, we cannot get it back."

The option to not set a root password and instead let the regular user use sudo seems to be mentioned in the installer for the first time around 2007, so it’s been there for a while.

Also OpenBSD use different versions, I’m guessing their vi is the original since it can’t handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.

The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.

From Fedoras wiki:
“On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora.”

From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
“This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package’s sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations.”

It is, they have the same text.

Nowadays vi is just a symlink to vim.tiny, so you’re actually running vim (in vi mode).

https://www.maketecheasier.com/assets/uploads/2020/08/debian-install-set-password.png.webp

Third paragraph. I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, I also installed Debian a few times without seeing it.

The installer says this when it asks you to type a root password. I don’t know why, but for some reason the information is both right there and easy to miss.

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

The wave of the reddit protests is over, now lemmy must grow on its own merits rather than being “not reddit”.

There’s an old saying: “Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix.” Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.

I think it’s a valid concern in this case.

Have you thought about the implications and consequences if we start banning non-violent expressions of opinions because someone else might find it disrespectful?

While I do agree that the website is bad, nowadays the main iso includes non-free firmware, and it’s the same installer for all DEs.

“Hello, support? How do I get through the Gnomish Mines in Nethack?”

People will say “use this editor” or “use that window manager”, but honestly it’s just personal preference. There’s no award for using ed to edit files, and almost anything you can do with one distro you can do with any other distro. You might get an urge to distrohop and compile the kernel, and that’s fine, but imho far more useful is to learn how pipes work and what you can do with regular expressions. A tutorial for bash is always useful.

I agree with that. Big players have too much power. In theory there’s nothing that stops us from self-hosting e-mail, but in practice today it takes a lot to make it work and be accepted by the big players. I think free speech is desirable and wish that it was the norm. The best we can do is to use services that align with that ideal, and make sure that the system itself is built so that it is open for anyone to be in control over who they interact with. Even if that means someone choosing to not interact with certain others. As long as it’s easy to use an alternative when there are restrictions.

Imho, the argument doesn’t translate to countries. In Iran, the government has a monopoly on governing, and most people can’t just hop over to another country with different laws. In effect, you can be stuck with a system you don’t like.

In the digital world, and Lemmy in particular, the same is not true. If you have a computer, you can “start a new country” with your own rules. No one is forced to join, and you can’t force anyone else to do anything. As a whole, Lemmy allows all opinions. The problem is central power, and free federated software is a solution.