Found a quite fun (old) article that talks about how BSD was born at Berkeley in the mid 70's. Describes how Bill Joy produced massive code in very little time.
Looking at how "big" a OS is these days it's nice to think back at the cleaner old-school versions of the world.
I'm a huge fan of Solaris 10, but sometimes I can't stop to wonder if it really has to be so big and intense. It tends to get in your face sometimes. Do we really need XML config files for every little peace of software? Are we not supposed to configure our applications the old fashioned way, using vi.
A good example is DHCPD in later versions of Solaris, why should I use pntadm and dhtadm to configure something as simple as DHCP. I get the core reasons of having the unified tool, i.e. when using an alternative namespace for DHCP data. But looking at a DHCP config file the file looks a bit quirky and has a big "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" header in it.
Why can't we just keep things clean and simple?
Well, I'm off to play with OpenBSD to calm my nerves, I always get tense after a bad hangover.
http://archive.salon.com/tech/fsp/2000/05/16/chapter_2_part_one/
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