Why not remove old stuff.

Port for mail/sendmail has been around for almost 20 years now. I don't mind if sendmail is removed from the base, for the same reasons Perl and later BIND got removed.

perl, python,... good that there got removed. They are not vital on a system, they can be pkg /installed later if user needs it.

Actually, it is true above, sendmail ... and what will come next.
Newer systems are not necessarily fixing all bugs. FreeBSD v.13.0 does not even seems to support Legacy or at least my notebook. I guess Bill Gates will laugh ...;)
 
I'm sure you know this, but as a reminder to others: the key difference is that su requires knowing the password for the user you want to switch to (e.g. root password), while sudo relies instead on a config file for deciding whether you are allowed to log in as someone, requiring only retyping your own password to use it. It's not difficult to see which approach makes it more annoying to revoke root access or invalidate passwords in a multi-user system.
Yes it is. You're forgetting that not everyone can use su, only those in the wheel group can, see also /etc/pam.d/su. Ergo: remove them from the wheel group and they will no longer be able to elevate their credentials.

And even though the default is to use root any account with UID 0 can do.

Ergo: this doesn't have to be annoying at all, if you know how to set this up properly.
 
Yes it is. You're forgetting that not everyone can use su, only those in the wheel group can, see also /etc/pam.d/su. Ergo: remove them from the wheel group and they will no longer be able to elevate their credentials.

And even though the default is to use root any account with UID 0 can do.

Ergo: this doesn't have to be annoying at all, if you know how to set this up properly.
that wheel is really a good thing.

I cannot imagine that on Linux systems, everyone can get root access.
 
You're forgetting that not everyone can use su, only those in the wheel group can, see also /etc/pam.d/su.

Frankly, yes. If you know the root password and you have the local or kvm access, then you can just log out of your account and login as root directly. That's likely can be disabled somewhere as well, but the point is that shared passwords are a PITA.

And even though the default is to use root any account with UID 0 can do.

That sounds interesting… Can you elaborate? Aren't those essentially the same user?
 
That sounds interesting… Can you elaborate? Aren't those essentially the same user?
Look into /etc/passwd, in specific check out root and toor. 2 accounts, 2 passwords, 2 environments yet one important similarity: both have the same privileges. It's easy to expand on that same principle.
 
They have the same privileges because it is only one account, not two.
And you're right, meh, I need more coffee. Getting my facts mixed up there.

Still, doesn't change the main point that it's not much more annoying to use su or sudo, especially taken into consideration that changing passwords from time to time is also good practice.
 
To be even more precise: There is no "default" on Linux because user authentication isn't handled by the kernel :) Linux systems use a PAM implementation for that, and PAM allows different configurations -- so the "default" not to require a group membership on Linux systems is a default of the many distributions out there, and I'd assume you would find one with a different default as well ;)
 
Similarly, on FreeBSD you can modify /etc/pam.d/su, remove the pam_group(8) line, and get the same behavior as on many Linux distributions.
 
Instead of removing old stuff (which is kept around for compat reasons), why not add "old" features into base? (e.g. w^x, encrypted swap ecc.)
 
To be even more precise: There is no "default" on Linux because user authentication isn't handled by the kernel :) Linux systems use a PAM implementation for that, and PAM allows different configurations -- so the "default" not to require a group membership on Linux systems is a default of the many distributions out there, and I'd assume you would find one with a different default as well ;)
PAM is slow on linux.
 
I've never seen someone post such an amount of random nonsense... well, we're already in off-topic here, but still, throwing in such a (btw totally unrelated) claim, you normally provide some evidence, quotation sources, etc.

here is meant ...

"login:" takes quite long on Linux.
No idea where it comes from.
 
Currently there is dma(8) (DragonFly Mail Agent) in Base too (I use that), and sendmail(1) is supposed to leave (sooner than later, I guess).

Why? To save Desktopusers that think in Giga and Terabytes few MB of disk?

Sendmail is called a "big MTA" in than man page, but it contains very few MBs.

The same question: why to delete the venerable standard editor ed?

This proposals come from people that do not have a feeling for Unix culture, but only want a cool operating system.

And I like that FreeBSDBSD is a "Software Distribution" containing a lot of usable old programs. The ones as packages, the
other as the ones expected from a Unix and BSD system, because they were always there.

Crivens, not "Orrrrderrr!!", but O::: de:::!!
 
This proposals come from people that do not have a feeling for Unix culture, but only want a cool operating system.

Crivens, not "Orrrrderrr!!", but O::: de:::!!
Coworker has that as a ringtone. But OK, O::; de:::!! It is. I wish we had someone like that over here.

And as I stated a long time ago, being cool is not my goal in life. Being cool means you got a piece of cardboard on your toe.
 
And I like that FreeBSDBSD is a "Software Distribution" containing a lot of usable old programs. The ones as packages, the
other as the ones expected from a Unix and BSD system, because they were always there.
The "software distribution" in the name is only there because BSD started as distributing some software (sources) to improve AT&T Unix. It was practically a complete OS before FreeBSD was even born, and that's what FreeBSD still is today. Of course, through the ports tree, FreeBSD is also a "software distribution", but this discussion here is more about the OS, the base system.

That said, I don't think many early BSD contributors would support your point of view. Why did they start BSD in the first place? They wanted change and improvement in AT&T's Unix. Unix has never been about a mindset of "it's that way because it always was". Some principles stay, because they are key factors for the success of the platform -- but individual tools come and go, and some of them stay.

I like the fact that FreeBSD's base system contains anything you need for typical (mostly administrative) tasks -- a shell, an editor, [insert long list here], even things like cu(1) enabling you to connect e.g. to a serial console. It should definitely stay that way. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't, from time to time, replace one tool by another (better) one.
 
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