Some questions about modern UNIX based systems

Having been around many older systems within my career, I have had the chance to see many different ideas on how to do things. Some of my greatest frustration with modern UNIX is how little it learns. (In some cases it doesnt even learn from its siblings).

Here are a few things to think about.

Why (do some UNIX systems .....) ?

Have poor support for serial line consoles
Dont have a version of more(1) that can go back a page
Dont have good error reporting (after all these years)
Crash when you try to mount an invalid file system
Dont Support kerberos at all levels
Dont have a good, modern system shutdown(8) command
Require /bin/dump to be run as root?
Cause /bin/dump to dump core if /etc/dumpdates is unavailable

Last updated: 94-12-08