The UNIX-Haters Handbook

by Simson Garfinkel

In the tradition of 12-step programs that help people overcome their addictions by sharing stories, The UNIX-Haters Handbook is the self-help guide for people affected by the world's most esoteric and most widely used operating system.

Turn here for answers to all-important questions, such as...
Why does the online documentation lie to us? Why does the operating system overwrite valuable files with garbage? Why does the user's guide bear no relationship to reality? Why do the commands have cryptic names that have no bearing on their function? What is a grep? What is vi? Do troffs live under bridges, or are they inverted trons? WHERE ARE THEY SENDING ALL THE UPPERCASE LETTERS?

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Nonfiction, Computers, Technology, History, Software

360 pages, ebook

First published June 1, 1994

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has some funny one-liners, but the content is very dated. There is also some good history of Unix and C and some interesting anecdotes from the early days of Computer Science.

However, the problems with Unix that are outlined are almost completely gone these days. This book's tone is overly negative ... perhaps due to thinking that the problems with Unix would _never_ be fixed.

Glad the bad old days are over.

[Gabriel Infierno · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the most funny book about programming that I have read, it's like a UNIX roast and besides it has aged it's a pretty cool history lesson that put some programming principles in debate and that for me was the more interesting part.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was, among other things, a good history lesson. I learned more about the history of UNIX and computers / computer science from this book than in the past three years of studying computer science. It also made me aware of some rather horrible design choices in both the old UNIXes and the modern Linux, to some extent.

The hating on UNIX going on in this book is written in a highly amusing way, and I found myself chuckling about finding the things that annoy me today in this book from 1994, almost 20 years ago. Appearently, no one was interested in fixing inconsistencies between programs, yet another proof of the theory that, by releasing a program, you make a temporary design choice into a standard (although this still does not explain the discrepancies between git commit -S and git tag -s, if you know what I mean).

All in all, I would recommend this book to people interested in the history of UNIX and bad design choices.

[Senthil Kumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Folks who have been using Linux/Unix for a long time know about some of it's shortcomings. This book presents in a critical manner some of the design decisions made in Unix and it's utilities. It is important to know these and not the accept bad design as a matter of fact and without any alternatives. This knowledge is helpful to build software that will not fall to similar problems as Unix/ or some of it's tools faces. The text contains lot of humorous anecdotes, but if you are novice to Unix/Linux, do not read this book, it may not helpful, read this only after you have sufficient familiarity with the System.

[Katya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essentially a book about time-travel. It's a peek into 80s in Unix world: when Sun was not owned by Oracle, when MIT, Berkeley and Bell Labs guys ruled the world in pre-startup and pre-facebook era.

Funny, witty and without worshipping the Founding Fathers. But this book is the very fact that all those people care.

Most of the flaws/bugs were fixed or caused that particular piece of software die a painful death. Except for NFS, it's still around but it still does not work :) Though a book is dated, the philosophy and problems they were trying to solve are still relevant even 20 years later.

A must-read for all Unix fans and anyone interested in history of computer science.

[Bruno · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is quite a gem!

But be warned that in order to appreciate it properly, you should make a cup of your favourite coffee/tea beforehand and set all your feelings about the subject aside =p

(The book is available for free in PDF too: http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/ugh.pdf)

[Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no more boring category of programming literature than Unix operating system fundamentals. Ok I lied, there are several, but they don't need to be. It is a topic I have tried to get into from multiple angles via multiple books and blogs and generally only the most self hating, left-brained Aspergers kernal hackers likely truly enjoy the topic as it is preserved in most books.

Reading about Unix through the lens of a disgruntled senior engineer venting about the backwards nature of the OS is by far the best introduction I have had and has proven to be the most accessible entry point to the topic that I have yet found.

My biggest problem with the book is that Unix is out of date, not when every Android phone is on Linux and Apple iOS devices are on a variation of FreeBSD...I would love for more updated books like this to be written, using this exact tone and this filled with experienced criticism because it would provide infinitely greater value to most readers professional lives in my opinion.

[Ronny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit it; I used to be a Unix lover. Back in the day, I downloaded Linux on a series of floppies over a 1200 baud modem (took me a week!), then did the same with FreeBSD. I did shell scripting, C programming, and got into flame wars with Mac users who were the sworn enemies of Unix users as far as I was concerned.

Since then, I've taken a more goal oriented view of life and... well, gotten a life.

Now I realize that while Unix is great for batch processing, it stunk when it comes to interacting with a human being. It was also insecure. Maybe some of this has changed since I used Unix, but that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of this book.

This book is all about preaching to the choir. If you hate Unix, are critical of its many flaws, or even like it but have a sense of humor, then the hilarious polemics and put downs in this book are for you.

[Michele Bariani · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been curious about this book for a while, unsure if it was more on the ironic side or more on the bitter one. It is definitely the latter. It surely has value in presenting the feelings of some of the (obviously unwilling) users at the time, so as a "computer science history" document in a way.

Still, I subscribe to the Anti-Forward that Dennis Ritchie graciously wrote for the book: "I do write you off as envious malcontents and romantic keepers of memories."

I obviously have the great advantage of having read this book 25+ years after it was published.
At the time I was actually starting to use Unix and Unix-inspired systems such as Solaris, SunOS, Irix, AIX and (still to the day) Linux.

It definitely did not age well :-)

[Chibimagic · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a quick read for its length. That's because it consists mostly of emails collected from Usenet. If you like reading forum- and blog-style comments about a subject to learn it, and don't mind 15 year old material, this is a good book. This book is funny, insightful, informational, and a bit outdated.

It'll put into words all your latent hatred for Linux. That's right, Linux. With Apple's work and 15 years of development, very little of this book applies to Mac OS X. But Linux might as well be stuck in 1995 with this book. The next time a freetard tries to convert you, point out everything in this book.

[Pavel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat dated, but overall a very good book that covers several different topics and how messed up they are due to how they came into being. Covers Unix, sendmail, C, C++, X, and file systems.

Book made me realize that I have been accustomed to a lot of messed up things in Unix and related technologies.

[Sahin Habesoglu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fun book to read, full of truth in my opinion. I have been in programming world for some time and when I was in college all we were taught was the things that are being described as basically worst ways of thinking about software. This is why we have not seen good progress in software for a long time other than very few companies made success financially.

[Max Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of historical anecdotes that offers a nice perspective into what problems commercial Unix users had to live with in day-to-day interactions. Thankfully, most of that has died out with the rise of Linux, largely having been replaced with the distributions zoo bunch which are annoying in themselves but certainly not on that scale.

[StrangeAeons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catharsis.

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and sometimes amusing read.

[Dmitry Nikolaev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this right after ‘UNIX in a Nutshell’. Or maybe even before. It explains an awful lot.

[John Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it's not being very funny, it's at least very interesting. A wonderful historical document written by nerds in the 90s but with lots to appeal to nerds in the 20s.

[Skylar Bleed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking hate UNIX

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be read by any IT professional at first grade of university.

[Peepee_KaaKaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

very quip and funny

if you want to read a summary read this

"The Trouble with UNIX: The user interface is horrid: Donald Arthur Norman"

[Ihar Hrachyshka · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yes, it's obsolete. But it's not even funny. And probably never really was.

[Max Lybbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny book, full of stories. Nice to see Michael Tiemann's name in a few places. A couple of times I had to agree either that UNIX does something wrong or that UNIX did do something wrong decades ago.

But, overall, I have to wonder why these people expected anything else ("deleting files is too easy, and there's no built in undelete": every operating system I've ever used has the ability to eventually honestly and truly delete a file, some first ask "are you sure?" several times, but even on those computers I've managed to accidentally delete files, and every time I've really truly wanted to delete a file I've been seriously upset at the interruption, 'I know I'm your djin and and all, but I think you ought to say open sesame a couple of times to show you're really truly serious'"). I have to agree with Dennis Ritchie's anti-foreward: "Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie. ... Bon appetit!"

[Manzur · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book very engaging and fun to read. Here're some of my points on this book:
- I laughed when I read the book, laughed at things that I was caught on things when I was a Unix beginner. Years left, but some of the Unix fails still remain, such as frequent data loss.
- this book is not just about fails of Unix, but fails of software. It teaches developers to design and develop with care and vision for the future.
- the book critics the usage of "goto" in Unix sources. I've also read the UnixV6 source code. And I find the code with goto more clear than it could be without it. So no need think stereotypical.
- each chapter has a very nice cartoon - I liked all of them
- the title of this books is a bit confusing. This book is about fails of Unix operating system, as well as programs that run under Unix

[Eduardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I ever laughed so hard reading a technical book. I wouldn't say that this is the main point of the book, though. To me it felt like a time machine, as though I could travel to 1994 and ask about what is the current state of Unixes.

Having worked with variations of Unixes in the past few years, I had my fair share of WTF moments while trying to figure out what was happening, I especially liked the snarky tone of the book.

Being honest, this is one of the best history lessons in Operating systems I ever read.

After reading it I found out that Eric Raymond wrote a review in 2008 (14 years after the publication of the book): http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=538, so all in all you get to see how bad Unix was in 1994 and what (if any) problems were solved in 2008. It doesn't get much better than this. :-)

[Mark Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting snapshot in history, giving a perspective on Unix from people who had the chance to use other high-end systems before they encountered it, and who had higher aspirations for systems than what Unix, or other systems offered at the time. It could be said that a lot of the criticisms of Unix were valid at the time it was written, but that they seem dated today. Eric Raymond provides a useful perspective on how this book has aged (at: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=538). He said that its criticisms of C++, the Unix file system, and NFS (Network File System) are still valid today.

[Thiago Perrotta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Available for free at: http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/ugh.pdf

Every user that has played with several Linux, BSD or macOS operating systems should definitely read this book. Sometimes people become blind whenever they spend too much time within the same environment, and thus this book is like a bucket of water thrown at your face, making you realize (in a funny way) several weaknesses of the ancient and obnoxious father of most modern OSs available today (at the time this review has been written).

[Jesse Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To Ken and Dennis, without whom this book would not have been possible."

First off, this book is comedy gold. It doesn't take itself seriously for even a moment. But that doesn't mean it's uninformative either. This book is written by those who used UNIX just as it came out and viewed it with fresh eyes. As someone who missed out on that entire era, it fills a lot of historical context. You will learn a lot.

If you work in software, I highly recommend this book.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone at work emailed a link to this, and I'm loving it. It has an Anti-Foreword which ends this way: "your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy."
Bring on the pie!

[Anton Antonov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this now, in 2014, is really refreshing. You see a lot of Unix problems explained in details, most of which are just pure hate, but anyway it's somewhat accurate. The author really gave his best to reach the Guinness Record for most emails quoted in a book. I think he might've won!

Full Review: http://blog.syndbg.com/review-unix-ha...

[Shritesh Bhattarai · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should be considered more of a historical text rather than a listicle of WHY UNIX Sucks. This book tells a story from the users standpoint who had to switch from DOS or a Mac to a Unix in a bygone era and many of the criticisms begin like "But think of the novices.." The criticisms in the book are largely fixed now and UNIX has become better.