Maybe not outright removed, since there is a /pasture with just a normal warning indicating that the software is no longer maintained. Also the question is who is maintaining the package or are you asking who is maintaining the code itself? Since running unmaintained code can be a security risk. So there is that; sure if it ain't broke don't fix it; but not to the point where the code itself is no longer maintained thus not having any security patches.

OMG! Lotus 1-2-3 is alive!!!!! Actually, that looks even older. Multiplan clone? But in any case, who would use it in 2020? Who used it in 1995?

That's actually a good point. I was probably reacting some because many who have chosen grub have sought to have LILO removed for similar reasons and I don't think it is quite time yet. It will be soon, I think, but not quite yet.

Slackware is a fully functional CLI-based desktop OS, right out of the box:
- joe
- sc
- elm/alpine/mutt
- links
- seejpeg
- amp/madplay/moc
- enscript
- qpdf

As a DOS-head, I really like this.

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This! During 1997 and 2000 I did my PhD at the UK. Most of my stuff (data) was in Portugal and I used telnet (!!!) a lot (plus talk, remember that?). I used sc heavily to build csv files in order to do graphics in gle. Join these with latex and I had all the necessary stuff to write my PhD thesis remotely, without any graphics display. So, at least I used sc as part of my daily life. I still use it occasionally, mostly when logged in remotely!

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I don't know if LILO is still maintained who knows; but I do not see why it should be removed. Perhaps LILO and GRUB can be an option during the install, same with ELILO and GRUB on a UEFI system, perhaps that would be a fine compromise.

I think it is.

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Interesting, I've used half of those but wasn't aware of seejpeg and wanted to see it in action. I wasn't able to get it to work in Slackware64-14.2 just now. I tried it in an xfce4 terminal window, a console window, as a user and as root, but still no go.

As a user it shows "svgalib: Cannot Open /dev/mem" and asks if I'm running as root.

Does anyone know a quick fix to make it run or is it too much of a mismatch with 14.2?

Thats good, thanks for the confirmation .

Said user would figure that out rather quickly when said user realized that xv allows you to view a graphics file, not modify it.

As it so happens, OSX provides both of those. vi comes with the OS (I think) and you can get emacs via a native installer (I know).

The one really good thing about xv is that it doesn't install anything into your history about what you've been looking at.

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Speaking for myself, I find LILO to be hugely useful, more so than GRUB. I tried GRUB and have posted my experiences with it. Suffice it to say, I find LILO to be rather more utilitarian than the more complex GRUB, and I intend to keep on using it so long as it does the job well for me. (My mobo is of the older generation, still using CSM and as long as my vintage AMD FX processor continues to do the job for me, I will keep on using it).

Let me go on record as saying that Unix has lasted as long as it has precisely because it doesn't protect the user from himself; quite the opposite. It gives the user the opportunity to learn more about his system and the power at his disposal; power, quite literally, at his fingertips. If you don't give the user the ability to bork his system, then really, the only selling point of new software that supposedly "protects the user" is that it's new and shiny; after the wow factor has worn off, it's time to move on to something else. Unix has survived several geological eras in computing because it makes learning it fun and quite useful.

Happy Slacking, everyone!

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Let me just play devil's advocate for a bit. Windows has been around since 1985. We're talking 35 years (in November)! Windows has steadily tried to prevent the user from shooting themselves in the foot over the years.

So, I'm not sure that the lack of "protecting the user" is the reason that UNIX has been around so long. However, I think that UNIX and then Linux do continue to hold some semblance of marketshare is because there are people who absolutely do enjoy what the OSes provide. For some, it is freedom, others flexibility, and others might enjoy having the ability to shoot themselves in the foot. But it is a mix of many things that continues to make Linux a great OS for some of us.

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I would say the contrary. The first versions of Windows had no separate administrator account; in effect everyone was root. Therefore, it was necessary to prevent the user from accidentally borking his system by keeping him out of it as much as possible. You weren't allowed to explore the system. There were frightening splash screens to warn you off. Everything was automated as much as possible to reduce your chances of doing something fatal. But the result was that users never got any kind of education on how the system actually worked. Hence the popularity of the "For Dummies" and "Idiot's Guide" series. These books didn't actually treat their readers as idiots and dummies, but they were clearly aimed at people who had been conditioned to think of themselves in these terms.

In Unix/Linux, users are protected by "least privilege", so they can browse their system safely and find out where things live and what they are for. It's not so much the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot as the reassurance that you are normally protected from doing so.

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Windows has had the "least privilege" concept since they introduced UAC in one of the XP Service Packs. Since then, they've tried to add more and more to protect users from themselves (the biggest semi-recent annoyance with this is mandatory Windows Updates that you have little control over unless you happen to get an Education or Enterprise license).

Linux has (probably) had the least privilege concept from the beginning (stemming from UNIX), but other than that, they really don't do much to protect users from themselves (with the occasional exception of some developers making their programs not run as root).