On September 5th, 2002,
Systronix Development announced the release of the first of a new line of
Linux distributions, based on the famous
open source game
NetHack. Rather than having a great number of difficult-to-remember commands with
irregular syntax, NH-Linux™ uses a series of single-letter commands which take only two arguments, a number and a letter or direction. In order to specify a file, the user "walks" around a text-based representation of his system until he locates it. Example:
You begin searching for files... No files found. --More--
======= ====== ====
=.....= =....= =..=
=.....+......-.F..= =..=
=.....= =....= =+==
=.....= =....= @....
======= ======
root the Superuser St:21 Dx:21 Co:21 In:21 Wi:21 Ch:23 Neutral
Dlvl:/dev/hda1 $:0 HP:24(24) Pw: 12(12) AC:-16 Exp:19 T:314142410
This radical new pseudographical user interface is the greatest ease of use that has been brought to Linux to date. New users have rapidly become engrossed in the system, working on it for hours on end. Users can search for the shrine of gcc, rumored to exist deep in the directory structure. Some may even find Linus Torvalds in the deepest levels of the dungeon and escape; none have ever accomplished this.
Most commands are easy to remember. In special cases (such as grep), the user can simply #engrave a search pattern in the dirt, and tell grep to search for it. This new form of data storage via engraving is more efficient than Linux's traditional memory-swapping, although ? characters are prone to appear. Systronix is working on this bug.
NH-Linux is now available for download at http://www.systronix.com and http://www.nh-linux.net. Enterprising developers should find the developer network between levels 4 and 6 to obtain free source code for this distribution.
WARNING: Fiction