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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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412 points conanxin | 1 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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xg15 ◴[27 Jul 24 08:46 UTC] No.41085291[source]▶
> Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine)

My impression was always the arguments were more like "Well yes, but we have this literal building full of technical manuals that describe every bolt and screw of your tank - and we can give you a copy of all of them for free! And think about it - after you have taken some modest effort to read and learn all of them by heart, you'll be able to fix and even modify your tank all on your own! No more dependence on crooked car dealers! And if you need help, we have monthly community meetups you can attend and talk with people just as tank-crazy as you are! (please only attend if you're sufficiently tank-crazy, and PLEASE only after you read the manuals)"

(This was decades ago, the situation has gotten significantly better today)

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lukan ◴[27 Jul 24 10:48 UTC] No.41085686[source]▶
"By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine"

Who would want that?

"Stay away from my house, you freak!" would be the normal reaction. Unless some serious trust is developed, I would not let people into my house while I sleep.

Also the actual usual reaction would have been more like: "hey it is open source, you can fix anything on your tank yourself"

You need a new module to connect with your other devices, just build it yourself, no big deal!

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heraldgeezer ◴[27 Jul 24 11:22 UTC] No.41085825[source]▶
Companies want that when prod stops.
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1. owl57 ◴[28 Jul 24 07:42 UTC] No.41091819[source]▶
Reminded me of an extreme case. In 2012, the largest Russian bank brought its prod back online, and then posted literally this:

> We invite specialists to take part in a professional discussion to identify the causes of Oracle DBMS failure

> System logs and a more complete description of the situation will be posted in the blog. To participate in the discussion, you must fill out the registration form and wait for an invitation to your email.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120716225650/http://www.sbrf.r...