The 90s Unix Utility That Fell Out of Favour
11 points 6 comments 3 hours ago
tomwheeler
In 1995-1196, I worked at an ISP. Our first step when trying to troubleshoot an access problem for a new user was to run the finger command on our server to see if the account had been provisioned yet.
30 years later, I still recall the time I had to calm down an angry customer after a frontline support tech told her that he was going to "finger her to find out what the problem is." He _really_ didn't think that one through!
1970-01-01
Finger is a stoneage network tool. Saying it fell out of favour is like saying bashing nuts between rocks fell out of favour.
pipes
Why is a click bait headline necessary?
iamflimflam1
(r)who, finger, talk - I remember having really nice gui wrappers for these that ran on XWindows and let you see who was online and chat with them.
anthk
finger sdf.org
finger london@graph.no
I think they mean, the 80s utility that fell out of favor through the 90s.
Those of us who were alive across both those times, 80s and 90s are not just interchangeable symbols denoting "before my time".