But yes, in the eventual case that I don't have Nix I can very much use the classic tools. It is not a binary choice, you can have both.

For example, in $CURRENT_JOB we have a bastion host that gives access to the databases (not going to discuss if this is a good idea or not, this is how my company does). 90% of time I can do whatever I need just with what the bastion host offers (that doesn't have Nix), if I need to do further analysis I can copy some files between the bastion host and my computer to do further analysis.

I can just drop it into the environment and pull in tools that I need using nix.

Not everybody is a sysadmin manually logging into lots of independent, heterogeneous servers throughout the day.

Same goes for a bunch of other tools that have "modern" alternatives but the "classic" ones are already installed/available on most default distribution setups.

[1] https://github.com/charmbracelet/

The infra may be cattle but debugging via anal probe err SSH is still the norm.

At my organization, we run 1000-node kubernetes clusters. Technically, I can SSH into the worker nodes, which I verified during setup. Have never done it. When a node reports as unhealthy, k8s kills and replaces it, and I don't really care why it went unhealthy.

We have a few SSH "bastion" hosts used for proxying into various databases, but those are so locked down that no one besides my team has shell access.

For developers, they get Grafana for logs/traces and various tools they prefer, like AppSignal. If something is exploding in production, that's it. No shells, no `kube exec`. It was very painful at first, but now our software has great self-reporting built in, negating the need for local access for troubleshooting.

apt-get/pacman/dnf/brew install <everything that you need>

You'll need install those and other tools (your favorite browser, you favorite text editor, etc) anyway if you're changing your OS.

> or SSH anywhere

When you connect through SSH you don't have GUI and that's not a reason for avoiding using GUI tools, for example.

> even use a mix of these on my personal computer and the traditional ones elsewhere

I can't see the problem, really. I use some of those tools and they are convenient, but it doesn't matter that I can't work without that. For example, bat: it doesn't replace cat, it only outputs data with syntax highlight, makes my life easier but if I don't have it, ok.

The point is that sometimes you're SSHing to a lightweight headless server or something and you can't (or can't easily) install software.

I personally haves an ansible playbook to ~setup all my commonly used tooling on ~any cli I will use significantly; (almost) all local installs to avoid need for root. It runs in ~minute - and I have all the Niceties. If it's not worth spending that minute to run; then i won't be on the machine long enough for it to matter.

^^ Yep. Totally this. I've become entirely too accustomed to all the little niceties of a well-crafted toolchain that covers all my needs at any given moment. It was worth the time invested to automate installing and configuring all the fancy newfangled stuff I've built up muscle-memory for. :)

One major difference can emerge from the fact that using a tool regularly inevitably builds muscle memory.

You’re accustomed to a replacement command-line tool? Then your muscle memory will punish you hard when you’re logged into an SSH session on another machine because you’re going to try running your replacement tool eventually.

You’re used to a GUI tool? Will likely bite you much less in that scenario.

Yes.

> Then your muscle memory will punish you hard

No.

I'm also used to pt-br keyboards, it's easier to type in my native language, but it's ok if I need to use US keyboards. In terms of muscle memory, keyboards are far harder to adapt.

A non-tech example: if I go to a Japanese restaurant, I'll use chopsticks and I'm ok with them. At home, I use forks and knives because they make my life easier. I won't force myself to use chopsticks everyday only for being prepared for Japanese restaurants.

If only it were so simple. Not every tool comes from a package with the same name, (delta is git-delta, "z" is zoxide, which I'm not sure I'd remember off the top of my head when installing on a new system). On top of that, you might not like the defaults of every tool, so you'll have config files that you need to copy over or recreate (and hopefully sync between the computers where you use these tools).

That said I do think nix provides some good solutions for this. It gives you a nice clean way to list the packages you want in a nixfile and also to set their defaults and/or provide some configuration files. It does still require some maintenance (and I choose to install the config files as editable, which is not very nix-y, but I'd rather edit it and then commit the changes to my configs repo for future deploys than to have to edit and redeploy for every minor or exploratory change), but I've found it's much better than trying maintain some sort of `apt-get install [packages]` script.

Agreed, but that doesn't stop you from using/learning alternatives. Just use your preferred option, based on what's available. I realise this could be too much to apply to something like a programming language (despite this, many of us know more than one) or a graphics application, but for something like a pager, it should be trivial to switch back and forth.

Awk and sed.

I like the idea of new tools though. But knowing the building blocks is useful. The “Unix power tools” book was useful to get me up to speed.. there are so many of these useful mini tools.

Miller is one I’ve made use of (it also was available for my distro)

Only to feel totally handicapped when logging in into a busybox environment.

I'm glad I learned how to use vi, grep, sed..

My only change to an environment is the keyboard layout. I learned Colemak when I was young. Still enjoying it every day.

Many folks nowadays don't get how lucky they are, not having to do UNIX development on a time-sharing system, although cloud systems kind of replicate the experience.

ed (pronounced as distinct letters, /ˌiːˈdiː/)[1] is a line editor for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It was one of the first parts of the Unix operating system that was developed, in August 1969.[2] It remains part of the POSIX and Open Group standards for Unix-based operating systems

so it is a bug in those distros.

Some of them are smart but sometimes I want dumb, for example, ripgrep respects gitignore, and often, I don't want that. Though in this case, there is an option to turn it off (-uuu). That's a common theme with these tools too, they are trying to be smart by default and you need option to make them dumb.

So no, these tools are not "objectively superior", they are generally more advanced, but it is not always what you need. They complement classic tools, but in no way replace them.

IMO, it's worth spending some time to clean up your setup for smooth transition to new machines in the future.

I never asked for such behaviour, and I have no time for pretty "modern" opinions in a base software.

Often, when I read "modern", I read "immature".

I am not ready to replace my stable base utilities for some immature ones having behaviour changes.

The scripts I wrote 5 years ago must work as is.

Note: if you want to make ripgrep not do .gitignore filtering, set `RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH` to point to a config file that contains `-uu`.

Sources:

- https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GUIDE.md#c...

- https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GUIDE.md#a...

That's on me!

--smart-case --no-messages --hidden --ignore-vcs

and then point to it with

.zshenv 3:export RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/.rgrc"

Not perfect and sometimes I reach for good old fashioned escaped \grep but most of the time it's fine.

> ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern. By default, ripgrep will respect gitignore rules and automatically skip hidden files/directories and binary files. (To disable all automatic filtering by default, use rg -uuu.)

https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Because hey guess what: you can still use grep! So I built something different.

Regarding ripgrep: if it's not bug-for-bug compatible with grep, it’s deemed useless. Yet, if it is identical, then why bother using it at all? What kind of logic is that?

Wow, that is so cool. This looks a lot more approachable than other sandboxing tools.

E.g. I have ls set up aliased to eza as part of my custom set of configuration scripts. eza pretty much works as ls in most scenarios.

If I'm in an environment which I control and is all configured as I like it, then I get a shinier ls with some nice defaults.

If I'm in another environment then ls still works without any extra thought, and the muscle memory is the same, and I haven't lost anything.

If there's a tool which works very differently to the standard suite, then it really has to be pulling its weight before I consider using it.

Then use grep, what’s your point? grep is not going away because ripgrep is better, but ripgrep might become more available?

I also notice you’re saying "if", so you’re not. So again, what’s your point?

Often there are plenty of of paths open to getting a decent environment as you go:

Mostly, I rely on ansible scripts to install and configure the tools I use.

One fallback I haven't seen mentioned, that can get a lot of mileage from it: use sshfs to mount the target system locally. This allows you to use local tool & setup effectively against another machine!

[1] Not like the time one of my friends "wardialed" every number in my local calling area and posted the list to a BBS and I found that some of them could be logged into with "uucp/uucp" and the like. I think Bell security knew he rang everybody's phone in the area but decided to let billing handle the problem because his parents had measured service.

I have a chef cookbook that sets up all the tools I like to have on my VMs. When I bootstrap a VM it includes all the stuff I want like fish shell and other things that aren’t standard. The chef cookbook also manages my SSH keys and settings.

not really contradicted by:

> exa: modern replacement for ls/tree, not maintained