Hehe. Here are the top silly UNIX stuff I have seen people do. mkpasswd -l > /etc/passwd (You do that in CYGWIN to sync the password file with Windows NT authencation, do this on a real UNIX system and it trashes the password file) chmod -R 777 /. Lots of stuff will not work when it is world writable. rm -rf / (Usually goes, why is the delete taking so long, oh shit.) I've done this one. tail -n 1 /etc/mtab > /etc/fstab I should have done tail -n 1 /etc/mtab >> /etc/fstab Instead of apending to fstab I blew it away. DOH!! Though if you catch it before a restart it is an easy fix.
rm -rf / This one is so iconic that it's not even allowed on the system that I use. I tried onetime because I was bored, and I was told that I had to issue rm -rf --no-preserve-root / GNU decided that if you're going to derp, you have to really herp your derp.
crontab -r Seriously which fsking idiot decided that the command switch to erase crontab and the command switch to edit it should use neighbouring keys on the keyboard (- and damn you Mandriva for making this the one stupid command you can issue without having an interactive prompt first)? And more to the point who wants to erase crontab ever? Have lost about four hours of my life trying to fix that one on various systems over the years - although I have only made the mistake once SSH is lethal - especially if you login to system A (your live web server), ssh to system B and don't realise that you entered the wrong password and therefore your still on system A then issue "su -l root; [return] password [return] shutdown -rf now [return]". Oh, and commenting a malfunctioning scratch drive (sdd) out in fstab - or what you think is the malfunctioning scratch drive - when what you have actually done is comment out (sdb) - which hosts "/" - on a server which doesn't recognise the USB keyboard until it's booted up... Damn you my bloody dyslexia!
Linux is a lot better than most other UNIX systems as far as user experience goes. I do agree that it could do better. Though it is hard to find that line between helping the user and holding them back. I think IBM did a good Job with SMIT in AIX. SuSE did a lousy job with YaST. I loath YaST, it gets in my way all the time. Red Hat has also done a good job with with their tools. I've gotten myself into trouble with the nested SSH sessions before. I've done the shutdown of the wrong system that way a couple of times. I think what would happen with many of these mistakes is a versioning file system. VMS has that and it is sweet.
And a huge part of that is consistency - the best one is where -r means recursive on some commands, yet for others it's -R and -r has a totally different meaning - argh! No wonder every time I try Linux on the desktop I go running back to Vista!
Actually, that's totally not what it is. I am a GNU/Linux user, but I am not an expert, just a developer. Distributions are actually pretty good right now as far as user experience in my opinion. I have used Ubuntu since 8.10, and it's gotten amazingly good (in 12.04) despite the fact that it used to be crap. While Linux users have a reputation for being territorial and religious about their distribution of choice, I think that we just need to include everybody else and support the programs we want, for that is how we will win more users. I don't deny the value of design or user experience/interface; which is precisely why I think Linux distros are headed in a good direction. There is getting to be less and less you have to do on the command line, but at the same time, you can do more than on Windows if you want to. As far as how to win more users, I think less arrogance on the part of the Linux user community would go a long way. Another is games. Microsoft has done their market research, and they know full well that the reason people don't jump ship to Apple or GNU/Linux based distributions which are free is that the newest and most exciting titles are written for Windows. I for one would like to see--and one day hope to contribute to--a resurgence in serious computer gaming titles written with portable base APIs like OpenGL, rather than the proprietary Microsoft Direct3D.
I was referring more to CLI UX design. That sounds like a misnomer, but think about some CLI apps that are easy to use once you know some about how they work. Git is an example. Its arguments and options make sense, it does things that make sense (like launching your $EDITOR for rewriting commit messages) and its error messages are for the most part informative and helpful, telling you what you did wrong. For GUI stuff and general desktop use, distros are far better today but I can't use an OS that breaks my wifi/sound/graphics. Tweaking is fun, but when your sound or wifi doesn't work, the novelty wears off extremely fast. For server stuff, there's no other game in town (unless you're talking about other *nixes like Solaris or FreeBSD). But I use a Macbook for my personal machine for a reason.
