''The UNIX-HATERS Handbook'' is a semi-humorous edited compilation of messages to the UNIX-HATERS

mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

. The book was edited by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise and Steven Strassmann and published in 1994.

The book concerns the frustrations of users of the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. Many users had come from systems that they felt were far more sophisticated in features and usability, and they were frustrated by the perceived "

worse is better ''Worse is better'' (also called the ''New Jersey style'') is a term conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in a 1989 essay to describe the dynamics of software acceptance. It refers to the argument that software quality does not necessarily increase w ...

" design philosophy that they felt Unix and much of its

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

encapsulated. The book is based on messages sent to the UNIX-HATERS mailing list between 1988 and 1993, and contains a foreword by the human factors guru

Don Norman Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially '' The Design o ...

and an "anti-foreword" by

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...

, one of the creators of the operating system. Many of the book's complaints about the Unix operating system are based on design decisions and anomalies in the

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

. The front-matter page's dedication says: "To Ken and Dennis, without whom this book would not have been possible.", referring to

Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B (programmi ...

and

, the creators of Unix.

Release

This book was printed as a trade paperback. Its front cover was designed to be similar to ''

The Scream ''The Scream'' is an art composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is ('Screaming, Scream'), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is ' ('The Scream of Nature'). The agonize ...

''. An air sickness bag, printed with the phrase "UNIX barf bag", was inserted into the inside back cover of every copy by the publisher. The book was made available to download for free in electronic format in 2003.

Reception

Later reviewers of the book have noted that some issues were resolved in the future, such as the development of the

ext2 ext2, or second extended file system, is a file system for the Linux kernel (operating system), kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed ...

filesystem addressing the discussed lack of

block storage In computing (specifically data transmission and data storage), a block, sometimes called a physical record, is a sequence of bytes or bits, usually containing some whole number of records, having a fixed length; a ''block size''. Data thus ...

References

External links

* *https://archive.org/details/TheUnixHatersHandbook {{DEFAULTSORT:Unix-Haters Handbook, The Unix history 1994 non-fiction books Operating system criticisms Unix books Comedy books

Contents

Release

Reception

Further reading

References

External links