The 90s Unix Utility That Fell Out of Favour
6 days ago
- #command-line
- #tech-nostalgia
- #UNIX-history
- The 'finger' command, created in 1971 at Stanford AI Lab, was used in high-trust UNIX environments to share user information like idle time and plans.
- Originally, UNIX systems were multi-user and collaborative, leading to commands like 'finger' that displayed personal data (e.g., home phone numbers) in plaintext.
- The decline of 'finger' reflects modern low-trust environments where personal data is protected, and social media replaces its functionality (e.g., sharing plans via Twitter/GitHub).
- Modern alternatives to 'finger' include GitHub's SSH key sharing (`github.com/username.keys`) and pinned social media posts for updates.
- Other deprecated UNIX utilities include 'write', 'mail', 'telnet', and 'uucp', which were designed for multi-user systems but are now obsolete or insecure.
- John Carmack famously used '.plan' files as a public changelog, similar to modern git commit logs or project trackers like Jira.
- Despite its obsolescence, 'finger' remains preinstalled on macOS, while Linux distros like Ubuntu have removed it due to security concerns.