On a side note:
I hate it that the password-change command is minimally abbreviated to “passwd”.
Come on, making it much more complicated to remember and saving just two freakin letters??
Do you not tab-complete your commands? I mean, my terminal usage for anything beyond very short commands consists of <first few letters of command> <TAB>.
Sure I do (although nowadays Strg-r does most of the heavy lifting for me), but as a decent touch-typist I am often faster directly typing short commands, like passwor… damn, I mean: passwd ;-)
But the only command that I have to look up everydamntime, although it has no abbreviation at all, is useradd.
Oh no, wait, I mean adduser!
… No, wait again… aah…
All the worse that Debian has both useradd and adduser. I never remember which is the one I want. And in Redhat-derivatives it’s something even more confusing.
The only thing I ever want to do is add a user to a group, is that too much to ask?
adduser is an interactive wrapper for useradd. It can, for example, prompt the user to set a password rather than execute passwd separately. Very useful if you just want to manage a user without reading through useradd’s command line options, then running usermod because you forgot to set something.
It doesn’t excuse the bad naming, I’d rather have something like useradd --interactive, but it’s worth remembering.
They did boatloads of horrific things to save bytes. They radix encoded strings, created the y2k and 2038 problems, normalized redirecting output to /dev/null, passed raw text blocks through a fifo file buffer rather than properly tagged data, ditched proper exception handling and a bunch more listed in the Unix Hater’s Handbook
On a side note:
I hate it that the password-change command is minimally abbreviated to “passwd”.
Come on, making it much more complicated to remember and saving just two freakin letters??
Do you not tab-complete your commands? I mean, my terminal usage for anything beyond very short commands consists of <first few letters of command> <TAB>.
Sure I do (although nowadays Strg-r does most of the heavy lifting for me), but as a decent touch-typist I am often faster directly typing short commands, like passwor… damn, I mean: passwd ;-)
If you haven’t, give fzf a try. Is like Ctrl+r in asteroids
“umount” is worse
First time I have to use it, the spelling really confused me. Wrote unmount and didn’t understand why it didn’t work.
I guess this also must be an additional layer of hellfire for dyslexics…
But the only command that I have to look up every damn time, although it has no abbreviation at all, is useradd.
Oh no, wait, I mean adduser!
… No, wait again… aah…
Next update changes it to usadder as a compromise. Supposedly, it’s short for “user adder” but we all know it’s to make “[you] sadder”.
All the worse that Debian has both useradd and adduser. I never remember which is the one I want. And in Redhat-derivatives it’s something even more confusing.
The only thing I ever want to do is add a user to a group, is that too much to ask?
adduseris an interactive wrapper foruseradd. It can, for example, prompt the user to set a password rather than executepasswdseparately. Very useful if you just want to manage a user without reading throughuseradd’s command line options, then runningusermodbecause you forgot to set something.It doesn’t excuse the bad naming, I’d rather have something like
useradd --interactive, but it’s worth remembering.You’d want
usermodfor that, no? If the user already exists and you’re just modifying their groups?@ozymandias117 @Hawke why not gpasswd?
They did boatloads of horrific things to save bytes. They radix encoded strings, created the y2k and 2038 problems, normalized redirecting output to /dev/null, passed raw text blocks through a fifo file buffer rather than properly tagged data, ditched proper exception handling and a bunch more listed in the Unix Hater’s Handbook
https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
Now this looks like an interesting read. Thanks!
Kinda, but it’s pretty much all horrendously outdated bitching about superficial flaws in tools from 40 years ago.
It’s the passw daemon
I SAID, pass the wood
🤷 that’s why we have ls, rm, mv and hell, even w.
To confuse things even more there’s a utility called pwgen and I can never remember which two letters to type before hitting autocomplete.
mv = move, thus:
That is so cool.
So
I could do this all day.