[maemo-users] Where is telnet?

[From: Matan Ziv-Av]

On Thu, 14 May 2009, Eero Tamminen wrote:

> Hi,
>
> ext Matan Ziv-Av wrote:
>>>> Unfortunately, I don't have it on my N810 and can't find a copy of it. 
>>>> And
>>>> the times I need it are when travelling and so I have not got around to
>>>> porting it myself!

I did not really write that. You have some problem in your quoting.

> Telnet isn't something that's either:
> - Needed by the device itself
> - An essential (needed in installing most of Debian packages
>  without them declaring a separate dependency)

The same is true for chvt, netstat, uniq, and probably many others, yet 
they were included. The decision to not include telnet was a bad 
decision. Admitting to mistakes and fixing them (even if only in 
Fremantle) is better than attacking someone who expects to have telnet 
on his internet tablet.

> It's an (advanced) end-user tool and can be installed separately.
>
> Have you tested that Busybox telnet even works as well as real telnet?
> With the past experience I have some doubts about the quality of misc
> Busybox tools.  :-)

Yes, I have. And even if it does not, it surely does better than no 
telnet at all.

I wonder what kind of QA did Nokia run on busybox's top or nslookup (for 
example) before deciding to include them?

>> Life with the tablet could be a bit simpler if Nokia chose to include more 
>> stuff that is available in busybox (md5sum, cpio, hexdump, ...).
>
> Some of them will be included into Fremantle; the ones that are in
> Debian in packages that Busybox currently claims to provide and
> conflicts with and which provide options compatible with GNU tools.
> Other tools belong to somewhere else.

telnet belongs on an "Interner Tablet", and claiming otherwise is akin 
to claiming that the WWW is the internet.


-- 
Matan Ziv-Av.                         matan at svgalib.org