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Kuro5hin.org: The Essential Linux Bookshelf VII: Review of The Unix Hater’s Handbook

[ Thanks to Paul
Dunne
for this link. ]

“This book has become quite well-known as a sustained anti-Unix
rant. It is an offspring of the Unix-Haters mailing list (now
invitation only), a place where poor devils who were forced to use
Unix could gather to share their woes; perhaps they still do.”

Reading this in 1994 when I’d been running Linux for only a
few months, large parts of it were a puzzle to me. Linux simply
wasn’t like the Unix the book described, or parodied. Indeed, it is
ironic that the book was published in 1994, the first year I think
that Linux was usable by a non-hacker.

“The first three chapters of this part are the best of the book.
The writers are on firm ground, compiling from the UNIX-HATERs
mailing list a selection of horror stories. Even in this part,
though, we see again and again people shooting themselves in the
foot and then blaming the gun.”


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