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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

Skimming this makes me long for the time when the multiuser nature of Unix was really utilized as intended.

I miss being on a system and typing "who" to see who is on, and starting a chat with them with "talk". Or sending mail to other users just on that system. Using "finger" to read updates in their .plan files.

Many of the "social" aspects of the internet today existed in that multiuser aspect of Unix, in a much more intimate way.

Macs and Linux machines are still multiuser systems, but "users" are pretty much just used to provide separate configuration and permissions scoping for different application services. It would be nice to have someone hop onto a terminal on my Mac once in awhile and say hello.

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Sounds like you should join a Pubnix!

https://tilde.team/

Very interesting! Thanks for this!

I didn't enjoy my tildeverse experience personally.. there are others like SDF:

https://sdf.org/

What do you enjoy more about SDF? (I haven’t tried either, just curious.)

I just didn't enjoy the social/cultural aspects I encountered on the tildeverse, it was quite immature and dysfunctional based on my experience ~2 years ago.

Yes, SDF.

My primary use is for my relayed gmail, but it's indeed fun to be parked on a box all day with people just like you.

sdf.org doesn't exist, according to Firefox. What is with these websites that can only be accessed by Chrome? And how is that even possible?

It opens with Safari and Firefox (on macOS 12). Maybe “does not exist” is a problem with domain resolution?

I can confirm sdf.org doesn't exist using Firefox but shows ok with Chromium.

On my debian pc. Probably a firefox bug? Oh, wait.. The second time I tried sdf.org it showed up correctly, so I'm guessing it's a temporary DNS name resolution where it fails on the first attempt.. Doesn't make sense!

Works on my fox. Probably something on your end or a temporary issue on theirs.

Here's some I found, that one on the list

https://github.com/cwmccabe/pubnixhist/tree/master/systems

I'm not sure it is entirely that helpful, but it IS a list!

There's also DECUServe for the VMS experience.

https://eisner.decus.org/

Unix computers at that time were expensive beyond the finances of most individuals to own one at home, and required special power and air conditioning. That's why one machine was shared among many users.

Presumably GP knows the reasoning for the decline of this sort of usage, but still misses this aspect of the computing environment.

Decline? Maybe, but cloud computing is surely bringing it back.

Cloud computing is ushering in the exact opposite. Each user has their own private cloud VMs; it’s much easier (and cheaper) to spin up and tear down VMs with images precisely customized by each user than to constantly run and maintain a single VM supporting a multiuser system. It’s also a far superior user experience; having root on your own machine is way better than having to ask a sysadmin to update a shared machine (and often getting denied in the process).

Who are the dumb DevOps giving root access to cloud environments?

We give them cloud shell access and Web UI, that is all.

What’s wrong with root access to a private cloud VM? Since VMs are private to each user, there are no security concerns with root access. If a dumb user playing amateur sysadmin accidentally borks their VM, they just tear it down and spin up a new one.

On the contrary, sysadmins who give root access to cloud VMs are smart, and know that having root access in safe, controlled environments does wonders for developer productivity. Imagine not having root access to your developer laptop! I have friends who’ve worked at such companies, and they all said it was hell.

In the vast majority of cases, you don't need root access to develop. You can install software and build and run code in your home directory. Root accesss is often just a lazy way for software installers to avoid the extra step or two of modifying their $PATH because some executable is not in /usr/bin

That precludes use of package managers, which makes life way harder (have fun building all dependencies from source!) It also makes it way harder to link against shared libraries, since you’ll have to update include/shared object paths for every piece of software you build.

There is absolutely zero risk or downside of granting root access to single user machines. Zero, zilch, nada.

Open an IT ticket, and the software shall be provided in SLA time.

Or I can just `sudo apt-get install` and the software shall be provided instantly.

No you won't, assuming the IT people did their job properly, regarding sudo administration.

> I miss being on a system and typing "who" to see who is on, and starting a chat with them with "talk". Or sending mail to other users just on that system. Using "finger" to read updates in their .plan files.

You've just described a BBS. Some are still around, accessible via telnet/SSH.

>You've just described a BBS. Some are still around, accessible via telnet/SSH.

right, but that misses the point a bit; being connected to others on the system at the time was basically frictionless -- no need to connect somewhere, you were already on the same machine.

saying "hey bob, connect to X bbs" is a bit different; you're not already working there -- it requires user intervention to experience.

You usually didn't have a local computer. Or if you did, it was just about powerful enough to call into a mainframe and act as a terminal.

What I find interesting is that Plan 9's "who" did not. It's just

ls /proc | sed '{grep out usernames}' | sort -u

so it's pretty specific to whatever machine it runs on, as opposed to who's logged into the installation you've run it on.

On another note, on Tenth Edition Unix, when you logged in from a Blit, something would get pipefiled[1] over your tty and wrap writes from new opens in something that puts it to a window-manager window. Possible because of not having name spaces for files.

[1] 'Mounted stream' in http://man.cat-v.org/unix_10th/2/fmount

Hey, why's the machine so slow? Oh, Frank is running a kernel build.

Hence why user limits should be configured. :)

good memories of playing Nethack on the University cs Linux servers. Very rich bones files.

What you really miss is social aspects of school or work environment where you could form meaningful connections with others without being stunted by corporate politics or ever growing list of sensitivities in society that gatekeep discussions of anything people actually care about. Otherwise similar functionality still exists in corporate tools. You can certainly chat with your workgroup or individual members, and corporate directory usually has a place to type in what you are working on. Plus others don't cause your processes to slow to a crawl by running CPU or I/O intensive workloads. Technology is not what needs fixing in this picture.

sensitivities "gatekeep" discussions of things people care about? seems like recent buzzword soup

Is it? Do you feel free to discuss subjects you most care about or your coworkers most care about without fear of getting cancelled? Not saying politics, just common aspects of human life.

Yeah this is why I abhor non organic team building outside work where the only thing safe to talk about is work.

No, I think what they miss is literally what they described. Because I feel the same way with LP MUDs which had many of the same commands and interactions, despite in fact having friends I can speak to and interact with in other locations.

I read an article about students using shared Google docs to chat in class and (to me) it sounded a lot like the experience of communicating with others connected to the same remote host.

I wonder if the Google Docs experience has an equivalent to the joy of discovering new systems and connecting to them and discovering new societies. I fondly remember some ephemeral connections made to the odd insomniac grad student or bored admin through those methods.

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