One downside of all of this is that there are even more things to remember. I learned find, diff, cat, vi (and ed), grep and a few others starting in 1976 on 6th edition. They have been enhanced some, over the years (for which I use man when I need to remember), and learned top and other things as I needed them, but things I did back then still work great now. KISS is still a "thing". Especially in scripts one is going to use on a wide variety of distributions or for a long time. These kind of tweaks are fun and all, but add complexity and reduce one's inter-system mobility. (And don't get me started on systemd 8P).
I had a similar thought at first, arising because I am starting with "lite" for a firewall (with a TP-Link USB Ethernet dongle for the 2nd interface). I really liked how there is NOTHING listing on ANY ports by default. However, I think it is still a useful article in that it describes the concept of "knowing what you own"
- installing only what one actually needs, rather than a litany of software that one might or might not need.
One downside of all of this is that there are even more things to remember. I learned find, diff, cat, vi (and ed), grep and a few others starting in 1976 on 6th edition. They have been enhanced some, over the years (for which I use man when I need to remember), and learned top and other things as I needed them, but things I did back then still work great now. KISS is still a "thing". Especially in scripts one is going to use on a wide variety of distributions or for a long time. These kind of tweaks are fun and all, but add complexity and reduce one's inter-system mobility. (And don't get me started on systemd 8P).