Why does every Linux question have 10 answers

10 ways to see which process is listening on a port

25 ways to find a file on linux

2n^10 ways to... ah forget it

Instead of find a solution, your job becomes, research these solutions until you find which one works for you

Most work well - except for your distro, or your distro version, or your system config, or your hardware, or the current phase of the moon. In all other cases, Lennart Poettering is to blame.

1) netstat -tulpen
2) find / ag

Mostly because there is seldom one way to solve a problem.

But what you describe is true for any OS, has nothing to do with linux specifically.

@Fast-Nop
Actually, that is one of the reasons, why big P wrote the OS called "systemd".
Disclaimer: I am using Gentoo with SysVInit and without Pulseaudio or *kit.

“Flexibility”

Mr P wrote systemd maybe because of that...

But systemd became like every thing lennart wrote: opinionated cancer spreading fast with the goal of assimilation.

I'm not against the idea of unifying things, but systemd is like the borg. And that sums it up.

Mr P stuff works on my machine and works well. Boots fast too.

I know systemd has it's problems especially when you look at the lack of control compared with what we used to have with every system separate. It still solves a lot of problems to and makes it a lot easier to configure across distros.

@IntrusionCM It's a bit funny, because netstat isn't installed by default on modern distributions.
netstat is replaced with ss (same arguments are accepted).

@sbiewald ss is doing the same thing as netstat, yes.

ss uses the netlink API and falls back to procfs if it's not available.

As ss is usually bundled with the iproute2 utils, it's become common and should exist in any modern distribution, yes.

It's a habit to have netstat around, but the only reason ss exists (and I find that name very hard to remember) is the netlink API.

@theKarlisK depends.

The mess systemd makes isn't better either.

Especially unitfiles are a PITA since systemd does have the habit to just incorporate whatever it can get.

When you have to maintain unit files from systemd… It's really hard since every new version can fuck you thoroughly with new features and things you need to be aware of, which is exactly the thing SystemD wanted to solve.

@IntrusionCM you are German, how could you forget ss

@electrineer Well.... It means socketstats my darling ;)

And I hate abbreviations like that, so I just forget them.

@IntrusionCM well I just gave you a free mnemonic

@electrineer No thanks

I don't understand. Are ya'll complaining about the amount of options available? Are you mad? you want to only have 1 solution available that may or may not do what you want?

isn't it better to have 10, so if the first one does A but you need A+B you can continue looking, but the next time you just need A you can use the first time because the first one does A really really well?

like, something you can do with 'ls' but for others 'find' is better...

If there's 10 ways then you have ten choices! What's the deal?

@linuxxx that in many cases it's choices about things you don't really care about when you want to get something done. Good UX design mandates sane, opinionated, mostly OOTB defaults where the designer already has made the choices for you (but you should be able to change them if you want) and said choices are as obvious as possible and work with minimum wtf?s across the vast majority of use cases.

@RememberMe Which is why I'm eyeing Mint.

@RememberMe Well... If find works better for me than the gui file viewer finding function, then why would I mind 10 other options? Maybe they're preferred by other people...

@linuxxx Because each choice has a cost in terms of mental effort and research time, both of which are obstacles towards what the user actually wants to achive (hint: not fucking around with the system). That's really basic UI 101.

Also, if there are 10 solutions, odds are that there are so many because they all suck. That's why none of them has become a de facto standard.

@Fast-Nop hm.

somehow yes, somehow no.

Yes, since eg I use netstat because it's a habit to do so.

No, because especially in the last years UX has become a burning red flag for me.

I changed in the last 5 years a lot of programs because the UX became an gruesome brainfart.

Mostly for the reason of simplicity, the Interface was reduced to trash and some team decided it was good this way *tm*.

And that's the thing that seems to be common nowadays. Since we're living in the age of ideocracy, everyone must be treated like a person with an IQ of 75 and less and an interface must be as minimal as possible with no configuration, since this could be confusing, too.

And yeah. Programs forcing me to follow a certain workflow without the possibility of alternations for the sake of "We know what's best for you" quickly land on my "let's burn this thing at a stake, it's best for me" folder.

Looking at a general scale.

Windows 10 systemsettings, Adobe, Gnome 3
.... The list is very long.

I'm way more comfortable with the terminal because I'm not constantly reminded of an option in MySQL called --i-am-a-dummy, as most interfaces feel exactly like that.

@IntrusionCM @dfox sorry, fatfingered something and reported your comment by mistake

@IntrusionCM Gnome sucks because it's Apple cargo cult. They saw that Apple removed options and followed suit, but they didn't understand anything behind it. They're really like the indigene people with coconut halves on their ears wondering why the radio doesn't work.

The paramount (and difficult) key to simplifying UIs is to design the underlying workflow to be smooth, then the UI becomes simple by itself.

It's also where OSS in general tends to fail because the GUI is misunderstood as wrapper for existing CLI programs. That breeds the bad OSS GUIs that combine the drawbacks of GUIs and CLIs.

It has to be the other way around: start with the workflow, then design the GUI to implement the workflow, then design the backend to implement the GUI.

CLI is great for infrastructure-like software where configurability is more important than anything else - and it's done by experts only once and then automated.

@Fast-Nop I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then!