The UNIX-Haters Handbook

by Simson Garfinkel and Simson L. Garfinkel

This book is for all people who are forced to use UNIX. It is a humorous book--pure entertainment--that maintains that UNIX is a computer virus with a user interface. It features letters from the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568842031
• ISBN13: 9781568842035
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Wiley Publishing
• Length: 329 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful! A non-recycler!

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!

One of the funniest books I've ever read

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.

A book that EVERY sysadmin (UNIX or otherwise) must read

Garfinkel, et. al. have created a masterpiece, by culling the best of the UNIX haters newsgroup and weaving the collection into one cohesive volume.As a certified SUN OS administrator and former UNIX network manager, this book crystallizes for me the reasons why (like all things painful) I stopped.It is chock full of precise examples and loaded with anectodes that back up their technical arguments against all things UNIX.However, it is (most importantly) a well written and very entertaining book. I read it three times with the same enjoyment each time. I laughed until I cried. When I was done, I laughed some more just remembering it.This is for me (quite literally) on my book shelf with three or four all-time favorite books.

Very, very funny. Cracked me up.

I am neither for nor against UNIX. With thirty years IT experience (we used to call it 'DP') under my belt, I've learnt and forgotten more Operating Systems than most people see in a lifetime. But I've managed to avoid UNIX.This book is hysterically funny.We need UNIX to combat the hegemony of Windows. But what disturbed me was the constraints against fixing bugs because they might cause exisiting code to fail. Lethal.Also, after six attempts and a whole weekend spent trying to install LINUX on a PC, I think the emperor has no clothes.Anyway, very entertaining.

Ravings about the system we love to hate

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.