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To clarify, I'm about half of the way through the book, and I have found a couple arguably-correct points. Complaints about Usenet and Unix vendors have mostly
by sethrin 11y ago
To clarify, I'm about half of the way through the book, and I have found a couple arguably-correct points. Complaints about Usenet and Unix vendors have mostly gone the way of the dodo. The author consistently ignores any distinction between the filesystem and the rest of the OS, which may have been accurate at the time of writing, but hasn't been true for decades. Similarly, we don't distinguish between a given shell and Unix as a whole, even though the book makes explicit mention that other shells exist. And why there is a chapter on Usenet passes understanding. Suggesting that shell expansion be handled by an external library is equally bizarre.
So far the valid points are:
* command input syntax is inconsistent. I don't know that this has a feasible solution, but it is true.
* tar specifically sucks
* sendmail configuration sucks
The real crime of UHH is that it merely hates, it does not instruct. When we do find valid criticisms, there is no suggestion for how to fix things, or how other OSes are better at the same role. I've resigned myself to read the entirety, but for all the authors' complaints about not learning anything from history, one can only feel like they have themselves to blame.