Customer Reviews

The UNIX Hater's Handbook: The Best of UNIX-Haters On-line Mailing Reveals Why UNIX Must Die!

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a breezy book poking fun at the foibles of Unix. As a sarcastic screed, it is not at all balanced or fair or reasonable, or even necessarily historically accurate. But it is valuable.

(...)It is valuable because in many ways it is a catalog of design errors that you can make when putting together a system -- any system. Designers of new systems should be able to learn from it.

It is valuable because it shows you how over time design decisions and compromises that seemed reasonable can come to seem ridiculous.

It is valuable because it really does show you that "Worse is Better". That is, Unix really did survive, and all the 'better' systems like Multics and Tenex failed (and of course they weren't necessarily better across the board). There is a lesson here for engineers who don't understand that making the 'best' product by some narrow technical definition does NOT guarantee market success.

It is valuable because it documents some of the *alternatives* to doing things the Unix way. Not enough to substitute for studying Multics and whatever, but valuable nonetheless.

It is valuable because many of the analyses of Unix apply to other systems, certainly including MS-DOS and Windows. Yes, Windows does some things better, and some things worse. But you're smart; you can figure out how to transpose the analysis.

Finally, it is valuable because it punctures the pretensions of those who hold up Unix (and Linux) as images of perfection.

Worth reading.

This book is a very entertaining read--hilarious, and largely historically accurate. If you know and love UNIX, you will love this book. If you only know macOS or windows, you'll be lost. Bear in mind that most of these essays were accurate in 1988, but are now historical footnotes (and valuable as such). This is no longer fertile ground for anti-UNIX arguments, despite some of the above comments by the less-informed.

Find one used, and enjoy!

I can't believe this book is out of print. Get a copy before it vanishes forever.

If you've ever suffered through cryptic Unix commands, man pages, or error messages, only to be told by some self-righteous Unix apologist that these problems are *your fault* and that Unix is *perfect and beyond criticism*, you'll love this book.

If you think that Unix is perfect and beyond criticism, you'll hate the book.

Don't get me wrong--I don't hate Unix, and probably the authors don't either. The real, and well-deserved, target of the satire are the self-righteous apologists.

I'll get this out of the way first: the book is a polemic, and I've no idea how serious the authors are. Given when it was written and the example annoyances it comes across as a requiem for the operating systems on minicomputers and mainframes, which from the 1980s on lost ground to cheaper Unix workstations. Losing the skillset you've spent the last decade or two perfecting isn't easy, and the unix-haters mailing list appears to have provided the perfect outlet.

The contributors to the mailing list and subsequent book are all technical, and as such are in an ideal position to articulate criticisms. Many of the criticisms are of a historical nature, even at the time of writing; many seem to be aimed at a different target (e.g. Usenet or Sendmail), but try to drag Unix in by association; and some are spot on and could be updated and expanded to modern *nix.

But... having power users write the book does have a couple of downsides. Firstly, you'll need Unix familiarity to know what they're talking about. Secondly, the book goes overboard with the nit-picking: e.g. some functionality that the user of one operating system likes is absent in Unix -- never mind that it's also absent in almost every other OS.

Also, the fact that we're comparing what were then called "open systems" with the legacy systems they displaced may be lost to a modern reader. This book an historical footnote to a high-end 80s platform war, of interest to anyone who was around for it.

I've gone thru most of the samples quote in the book. What I had found were the bugs are still out there. I can crashed Solaris 2.6 and 7 easily as an innocent user without any admin right.

There I don't agree with that these patches are long ago fixed. No they are not.

So whoever need to support Unix should read this book and try to apply the examples to their Unix system. (Of course, not the production one.)

Unix, and to some extent, its offspring Linux have always been something I've hated, and it was very refreshing to come across a book that summed up all my frustrations perfectly. In the Unix Haters Handbook, Daniel Weise and Simson Garfinkel take aim at your average geek's most sacred cows, from Unix to Usenet to the C programming language, and the result is nothing short of hilarious.

The first portion of the book is dedicated to exposing the basic flaws of the Unix operating system, decrying the "Worse is Better" philosophy that it is built on. The crude, antidiluvian console interface, the utter lack of documentation, the hopeless X-Windowing system, nothing is spared from the book's wrath. The latter is devoted to exploring the flawed peripherals of Unix, from sendmail, to the troublesome system administration and file systems. Lastly, the C programming language is also thoroughly lambasted, undoubtedly earning the ire of geeks everywhere.

The authors present their frustrations in a humorous and tongue-in-cheek manner, sprinkling anecdotes from other users fed up with Unix as well. But at it's core is a strong refutation of the claim that Unix and Linux are the embodiment of perfection. No doubt Linux Zealots will hate this book, but I found it to be a highly enjoyable read. The only flaw is that, being published in 1994, the material is quite out of date in sections are no longer applicable to modern technology. In spite of this, I highly recommend The Unix Hater's Handbook to anyone wishing to hear a different viewpoint besides the Linux propaganda spewed forth from the maws of geekdom.

Unix is one of those systems that you can only be for or against, Unix users are normally against as this book perfectly shows. The anti foreword by Dennis Ritchie shows the academic level at which the pro-con discussion normally takes place:

"<...>Your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations. Like excrement, it contains enough indigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some."

The book contains many literal transcripts from uunet news postings which use the same tone.

Many examples of Unix insanity are given, who didn't ever use rm * .o when actually rm *.o was meant, or who doesn't think that the sequence mv a -a; mv -a a should result in file a back where it was ?
Sometimes the complaints are unjust (occasionally footnoted with something along the lines of: well it is possible to do this, but not obvious), outdated or irrelevant, but most of it is very true.

The book attempts to shred UNIX, but does not succeed. While it does make some good points, it compares UNIX to the best features of all other operating systems, which is not fair. So, in one chapter the book criticizes UNIX for not having records as part of the operating system, which is a mainframe trait, then in another chapter the book says how the MS Windows find utility is better than that of UNIX. As a UNIX lover, it was interesting to read different points of view, but this book is only preaching to the converted

If you can find a copy of this book, grab it and hold on to it, for it's a true UNIX classic. Don't miss the Forward by Donald Norman, Apple Computer, and the Anti-Forward by Dennis Ritchie of AT&T Bell Labs.

The preface starts off by stating, "Things Are Going to Get a Lot Worse Before Things Get Worse." As you read on, you'll quickly see their point... as you laugh between the paragraphs.

Then there's this choice tidbit: "Modern UNIX is a catastrophe. It's the 'Un-Operating System': unreliable, unintuitive, unforgiving, unhelpful, and underpowered. Little is more frustrating than trying to force UNIX to do something useful and nontrivial. Modern UNIX impedes progress in computer science, wastes billions of dollars, and destroys the common sense of many who seriously use it. An exaggeration? You won't think so after reading this book."

This is truly a humorous look at the dark side of UNIX, written by highly knowledgeable UNIX insiders. Some of the chapter subtitles include: "Power Tools for Power Fools," and for the C++ chapter, "The COBOL of the 90s."

This book explains that there are several myths about UNIX, one being that UNIX is well-documented. Another is that UNIX is documented.

The authors are well-respected experts in their field - just check on the links and see all they have written. They have a marvelous tongue-in-cheek way of explaining the various foibles they have encountered along the way in dealing with UNIX. There are numerous funny accounts from other users fed up with UNIX as well.

Please keep in mind that this was published in 1994, so some of the information may seem a bit outdated to UNIX newbies. And the Anti-Microsoft-at-Any-Price Linux zealots will possibly hate this book, feeling that it's heretical propaganda. Sometimes they just need to learn to lighten up - this book was written to be funny, in a dark humor fashion that only a true geek could appreciate.

If it wasn't made to be humorous, then why would the authors glue a real barf bag inside the cover?

You might be lucky and find a copy online here or in a second-hand bookstore, but they are rare to end up on anyone's shelf for long. If you do find one, grab it and enjoy it. I'm on my second copy - the first was "borrowed" by a UNIX zealot who "forgot" to return it. And no, you can't have mine - it's not for sale.

You have to love UNIX and all it's idiosyncrasies to really appreciate this book. Here's real proof that computer geeks have a real sense of humor, far more than might be expected.

This reviewer cannot help but close with the following quotation, which is not in the book:

"Many say that DOS is the dark side [from Star Wars], but actually
UNIX is more like the dark side: It's less likely to find the one way
to destroy your incredibly powerful machine, and more likely to
make upper management choke."
~ Lore Sjöberg, noted Internet humorist

1) Hilarious:
- An anti-forword by Dennis Ritchie: "Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it; sometimes one wonders why you just don't shut up and tell
people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac".

- other examples: in the pages of the book.

2) Educational: read the book.

(this comment is yet another Unix-styled documentation about the book :-) )