Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The "old knowledge" thing is a huge one - I know there are reasons why Linux keeps changing which firewall manager you're supposed to use and now we do ip addr show instead of ifconfig eth0 but it is annoying to keep up.

I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above, but it breaks MY userland memory when I have to learn new tools.

Of course if you stay with Ubuntu you'll find fifty thousand posts on whatever question you have.




> I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above

And the worst part, Linux actually breaks userland _way_ more often than any of the *BSDs...

"Moving what should have been dev nodes to sysfs since 2010 (TM), then reorganizing sysfs every couple years..."


This is where the *BSD trees including the kernel and the distribution also helps - they can keep the “user interface” the same while still updating everything.

Linux seems to have to create a new way of doing something because there’s no guarantee they can get the distributions to update the tooling.


> which firewall manager you're supposed to use

Just use iptables directly and iptables-save/restore. In FreeBSD pf.conf is way nicer and easier but this trick works for me in Linux.


>Just use iptables directly and iptables-save/restore.

Not nftables?


I have no idea what it uses as a kernel interface nowadays. Did they change the userspace tool again? This is another reason why I like FreeBSD. The tools and syntax barely changed between ipf and pf and the latter was an improvement. I even use as a gateway instead of an EdgeRouter which I find a nuisance to set firewall rules onto.


Yeah, I'm talking about ipchains -> iptables -> ntfables, not necessarily the various firewall management toolchains on top of those (shore wall, ufw, etc).




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: