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Comment by shtylman | Hacker News Reader

This post just stems from the fact the user did not know how to do something. This has very little to do with an updated motd or the very unrelated bzr branch he had to get. Don't like it? use something else. The time you wasted writing this post was probly greater than the time wasted finding the solution.

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No, the core problem was that man motd did not help tell him how to do something. That's what the man pages are supposed to do... man motd on my Oneiric system still says nothing about this lovely little 'feature'.

Not to mention the questionable desirability of stacking complexity upon a very simple goal...

That seems a bit ad hominem. The author, despite the excited tone, points out numerous legitimate failings of documentation and convention in Ubuntu.

This could possibly be the dumbest reply ever on HN.

The motd file, by convention, is displayed whenever you log in to a Unix box. It has been this way for longer than you have been alive.

There is no question of 'use something else'. There is no app store for alternatives to /etc/motd. There is no dialog box that pops up that asks you what alternative to motd you would like to see.

The standard unified method for determining what a system file is composed of is called 'man'. This has also been around since long before you were alive. The author demonstrated correctly through the use of this tool that the ubuntu system for displaying the motd is (a) needlessly overcomplicated, (b) totally broken, and maybe most importantly (c) at odds with its documentation.

Please log out of the internet.

This could possibly be the dumbest reply ever on HN.

>There is no question of 'use something else'.

Yes, there _is_ an alternative. It's called use something else. Use a distro that doesn't change. Use a BSD, use Slackware, use RHEL/CentOS. Don't use a bleeding edge distro that is best known for change if what you really want is the same thing you've seen since before you were born.

If you don't like how Ubuntu does it, don't use Ubuntu.

It's a little hard to complain about Ubuntu if you're not using Ubuntu. Your argument boils down to "don't complain".

So you understand my point. Why use Ubuntu if you're just using it so you can complain about it? The idea being, Ubuntu being broken is no new thing. If you're still surprised by it, maybe it's not the distro for you. Rather than complain, use the freedom that Linux provides and move to a distro that is more compatible with your use. There are many out there that are not in the habit of breaking things, but Ubuntu is not one of them.

It's a strange assumption that someone would be using Ubuntu just to complain about it. I'm fairly sure there are fewer Linux distros than there are Linux users so it's very unlikely that any user is going to find a distro perfectly suited to them.

A couple points:

1) Every distro out there has its weaknesses (everyone likes to tout Arch, but it was only recently that pacman got support for crypto-signing, for example).

2) If every user that ever found a problem with any Linux distribution just hopped to another Linux distribution then: 1) they would run out of distros real fast and 2) nothing would improve inside of said distros because there was no one complaining (or challenging the status quo).

Are you serious??

Since "man motd" does not tell you how /etc/motd actually works, the solution to getting a working /etc/motd is to use another OS?

This all could have been avoided with "man motd" saying something useful.

No, the solution to complaining about Ubuntu is to use another distro. Everyone knows Ubuntu breaks things all the time, yet everyone still gets up in arms every time. Stop complaining, switch to something that's stable.

Exactly. I am so pissed off that my car has a bent cup-holder that I will go and get another car.

More like if you keep buying Chryslers but they break down every 6 months, maybe you should buy a Honda.

There is no question of 'use something else'.

So, what you're saying is that this new motd system is some seriously disruptive technology? Good on those ubuntu kids, showing us all how its done.

What benefit is there from changing functionality that's worked for decades and not documenting it? This is core Ubuntu functionality that they changed, and they did not document it.

It's not disruptive. It's just idiotic.

It's disruptive in the same way me shouting at you while you're trying to get work done is disruptive.

[ For that matter, 9/11 was pretty disruptive, but I don't think that terrorism is a good start-up idea. Please refrain from knee-jerk reactions (i.e. "I can apply the word 'disruptive' here, therefore it's good"). ]

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