Oregon State University has their own take on the Linux Philosophy.
Edited for gender neutrality.
- The user should know better…..so they must specify how things work.
- Provide mechanisms, not policy
- Mechanism: long life time
- Policy: short life time
- Its not friendly, but its efficient
- Don’t confuse ease of use with efficiency
- Pedestrian OS’es achieve glossiness by locking users into one interface policy.
- Its narrow, rigid and works well for a fixed set of jobs.
- Unanticipated tasks are often impossible or very painful.
- Easy things are easy, hard things are possible
- Linux provides a large set of simple tools…
- which can be connected with well specified interfaces…
- which are usually textual data streams.
- No one big tool is smart enough to handle all cases or optimized for everything or can anticipate all the uses to which it may be put.
- Its a big tool box, and a lumberyard full of lumber
- We get a big say in what gets built and how its structured
- Its a plus for us. We’re engineers. We build stuff.
- Button pushers are easily replaced, craft your own tools
- We are being groomed to be consumers
- Resist and be creators of new things