![James Farrell](/sites/default/files/pictures/img_0.jpg)
I am a long time UNIX system administrator and open source advocate. In recent years my primary focus as been on Linux & FreeBSD systems administration, networking, telecom, and SAN/storage management. I love building infrastructure, tying systems together, creating processes, and bringing people together in support of their technical efforts.
When I can, I try to contribute back to the open source projects either with patches, or by helping others in technical support forums.
Authored Comments
I would generally agree with you. Anyone who uses AIX or FreeBSD will see how simplistic the boot process is, making it overall easier to maintain and extend when needed.
There is such a thing as making something overly and unnecessarily complicated. Look at the last versions of AT&T SysV to see thing like character devices, network configuration, and service management to see lots of complexity that largely went unused and never ported to other UNIX falvors
FYI, although MacOS uses a micro kernel architecture and generally based on *BSD, they are making lots of efforts to change and obscure it's UNIX underpinnings. Look at recent versions to see things like root's inability to perform some actions, obscuring and removing the notion of traditional user management (/etc/passwd, etc.). I still make heavy use of MacOS for my daily work and overall like what they have done with the UI and rely heavily on terminal/ssh and built-in shell/languages -- but it is definitely moving away and obscuring what a Unix system used to be, starting to discourage the notion of multiple users and non-UI administration.