Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux is only free if your time is worthless. ;)
It's like a free puppy.
Free as in beer and free as in poops everywhere.
The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
61–70 of 163 posts
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#62I've just skimmed the TOC and, having never seen this book before, I'm a little in love. Here's why It's a cynical UNIX manual from the 1990's. Here: > 14 NFS..............283 > Nightmare File System > Not Fully Serviceable............284 > No File Security...........287 > Not File System Specific? (Not Quite)..........292 Here also: > The Oxymoronic World of Unix Security .......243 > Holes in the Armor ........244…
> I bet I can find more similarities than differences. Most of what's on the book has been fixed (not NFS, this one is forever), and we have an entirely new set of things to worry about. The book is funny, but every part of it feels old.
Rereading the section on NFS again, I suddenly realize that I was foolish to have skipped it as out of date. Since my last read I have encountered some incarnation (heh) of every single one of the problems listed in that chapter. I'm betting v4 isn't much better either. Is there a good network file system solution!?
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I bet I can find more similarities than differences. Most of what's on the book has been fixed (not NFS, this one is forever), and we have an entirely new set of things to worry about. The book is funny, but every part of it feels old.
Rereading the section on NFS again, I suddenly realize that I was foolish to have skipped it as out of date. Since my last read I have encountered some incarnation (heh) of every single one of the problems listed in that chapter. I'm betting v4 isn't much better either. Is there a good network file system solution!?
What's wrong with nfs v4? It was quite a bit faster than the alternatives last I checked.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#64I founded the mailing list the book was based on. These days I say, Unix went from being the worst operating system available, to being the best operating system available, without getting appreciably better. (which may not be entirely accurate, but don't flame me). And still miss my Lisp Machine. It's not that Unix is really that bad, it's that it has a certain model of computer use which has crowded out the more am…
MT-
Here we are 25 years later and now UNIX is the "good" OS.
The horror.
-Chris
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#65I think the success of Unix is much better explained by "Worse is Better" than the modularity/composability of little utilities called the Unix philosophy.
And DOS was a lot worse than Unix.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "How is [systemd] Europe's fault?" The only way that makes sense is if they're referring to Lennart being German, but that's kind of a bullshit argument because SystemD was not some novel idea; launchd was around first and came from the American west coast.
counterpoint: launchd works.
What doesn't work about systemd?
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a systems software researcher, I concur. I like Unix and I’m very greatful for its impact on computing, but Unix and its derivatives are not the final answers of systems software design. I feel that much of the software engineering and computer science world (even among OS researchers) is unfamiliar with non-Unix designs other than Windows. We can learn a lot from historical non-Unix operating systems such as the…
BeOS is the silent master we can all learn from
IIRC it still looked very Unix'ish once you dropped into the shell.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#68Much of the book is very dated, complaining about things that have been rectified many years ago. However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel. Their prevalence today is as much a historic and economic accident as a rational consequence of their objective merits. Both are socia…
> However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel. The problem is, this book doesn't actually motivate that lesson. Instead, it spends a lot of its time sniping rather than arguing for why the entire philosophy is perhaps misguided or outright wrong. And sometimes, even the snipe…
> I'm not sure anyone actually understands how name lookups work when templates are in play
All you really need to figure out for that is what a "dependent name" is. And that has a very straightforward definition.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#69I founded the mailing list the book was based on. These days I say, Unix went from being the worst operating system available, to being the best operating system available, without getting appreciably better. (which may not be entirely accurate, but don't flame me). And still miss my Lisp Machine. It's not that Unix is really that bad, it's that it has a certain model of computer use which has crowded out the more am…
Do you have any suggested reading to learn more about the more ambitious visions from the 70s and 80s, and why they didn't pan out?
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#70This is a tongue in cheek but also piece of shit MIT propaganda piece mostly written by the clowns who created the abortions that were Multics and LISPMs. Like as if every software engineer should start their next project by warming up their soldering irons to add obscure new features to their CPU's! I know because I attended that school and worked with the fathers of Multics. The sad fact is that MIT produces extrem…
That abortion called Multics was assessed by DoD as not having any of the memory corruption security exploits that plague UNIX to this day.