Yes, or one of the forks.

break a lot of backwards compatibility or radically change the current way of doing things

Plan 9. We can still have textual interfaces without emulating the ancient use of teletypewriters.

The things I’ve read (admittedly mostly from the OpenBSD camp) from BSD devs, they seem to not worry about corporations building from their source that much, instead they actively try to get rid of GPL code because it isn’t permissive enough for their standards.

Theo wrote "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time.

But once the code is GPL’d, we cannot get it back."

The option to not set a root password and instead let the regular user use sudo seems to be mentioned in the installer for the first time around 2007, so it’s been there for a while.

Also OpenBSD use different versions, I’m guessing their vi is the original since it can’t handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.

The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.

From Fedoras wiki:
“On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora.”

From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
“This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package’s sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations.”

It is, they have the same text.

Nowadays vi is just a symlink to vim.tiny, so you’re actually running vim (in vi mode).

https://www.maketecheasier.com/assets/uploads/2020/08/debian-install-set-password.png.webp

Third paragraph. I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, I also installed Debian a few times without seeing it.

The installer says this when it asks you to type a root password. I don’t know why, but for some reason the information is both right there and easy to miss.

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

While I do agree that the website is bad, nowadays the main iso includes non-free firmware, and it’s the same installer for all DEs.

The Gopher renaissance era perhaps?

I’ve started to reconsider how I do things online. For such a long time it’s been the norm to expect things for free (gratis), and users became the product. If the choice now is being bombarded with ads or paying for a service, I’d rather pay a reasonable price. If I want online storage to keep my files backed up and available, then a small sum is acceptable to me. The important thing is to choose providers who believe in the open spirit of the internet, using free software, respecting privacy. I’ve submitted a couple of patches to the operating system I use. Etc. I want the internet to be a cooperative, friendly place.