On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 03:25:41PM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote: > So the answer to my question, "Why dash?"... the answers weren't very > convincing seems to have boiled down to these answers: > > - Bash is fat, especially for embedded systems, and smaller shells will > boot faster. > - Bash acts differently than other shells. > - Shell scripts starting with a wimpy /bin/sh-shebang are broken by default. > > In response, I'd say... > > - Don't use bash if you don't want to, but don't push your smaller shell > on me just because of that. > - Duh. > - Duh. > > Seems like a dumb set of reasons to change the default non-login shell, > to me... people tinkering with the defaults always leads to breakage, > something Linux is uber-famous for. It's getting old. > Well, defaults are meant to be as inclusive as possible. Whereas dash is suitable on a well resourced machine, bash is not suitable on a very low resource machine. Besides, if someone uses the /bin/sh specification for a script and then goes on to use bashism, that is *by definition* broken. It simply the fact that bash is the default that masks the brokenness. > Anyone that doesn't know all of the above when choosing to use Linux, > isn't paying any attention at all and shouldn't be designing anything, > let alone an OS. And especially not by committee. > > (On the flip side, anyone using Linux not expecting the so-called > "leadership" to constantly break working things, hasn't paid any > attention to Linux history either.) > > Linux as a whole is stuck in a never-ending break-fix cycle it can't > break out of. (No pun intended.) > So, you would rather that things stay the same rather than improve (and potentially break)? There is an operating system targeted at just that crowd. It is called MS Windows. You are more than welcome to go use it. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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