[RndTbl] Linux "write"

Adam Thompson athompso at athompso.net
Mon Jul 3 02:04:17 CDT 2017


Sorry, I have to agree with them.  Your use case is... pretty much obsolete, at least in my opinion.

I can honestly say that I haven't even cared, never mind *needed* to, use write(1) to reach a locally-logged-in user running a local X terminal since 1993, when I left the UofM at a time when people still did stuff like run X apps remotely from multiple systems.  This is a real world example of https://xkcd.com/1172/ from my perspective.

I use write *very* occasionally on systems where I know everyone has SSH'd in.  Maybe once a year.  They could deprecate write(1) and wall(8) altogether and I wouldn't shed many tears.

Having said that, yes getting working code deleted out from under you is really, really annoying.  Especially from a group that navel-gazes and doesn't attempt to find out usage levels first.

OpenBSD, for example, deletes a *ton* of legacy code on a regular basis.  But if you follow the mailing lists, you always have a say, your voice gets heard.  Maybe ignored, but heard :-).  Several times in my memory, they've refactored code instead of deleting it when 2 or 3 people politely objected.

Anyway, I don't have a neat solution wrapped up for you, sorry.  I finally gave up on Linux as a desktop last year, and I was using gnome terminal to the bitter end (and not caring whether it wrote to utmp/wtmp or not <grin>).

-Adam

On July 3, 2017 1:44:16 AM CDT, Trevor Cordes <trevor at tecnopolis.ca> wrote:
>On 2017-07-02 Adam Thompson wrote:
>> Surely *one* of them will meet your needs?  And if not those, "dnf
>> search terminal" should return about a hundred more.
>
>I guess I should have reworded my question to: what's your favorite
>terminal, and can you quickly check if it does my 3 must-have
>requirements.  Ya, a bit lazy on my part, but also good to see what the
>MUUG old hands have decided/perfected over the years.
>
>I've tried a few other terms over the years, but they always lack one
>of my must-haves or have some major flaw.  g-t is actually *very* nice,
>if they would just stop deleting code (the cause of every grievance
>I've
>ever filed)!!!
>
>This, from the gnome bz I referenced, sums out their attitude: "decide
>which ones are still relevant on _modern systems_, and remove the
>rest".

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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