this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Around 2000 or so, I used to work in tech support for a software company who had like 5000 Windows-based customers and 5 running Solaris. My boss chose me to learn Solaris when the previous "expert" left. I bought this book and started hacking. Good times!

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] someguy3 31 points 5 months ago

This is the only one I know.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hahaha. And they say the internet is only for porn.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That is only one corner of it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (6 children)

what does it mean if intent is "low" or "high"?

Also this is either quite old, or they're just delusional boomers ranking google, amazon, facebook and youtube above the "crap" line. I haven't even touched Yahoo in ages, so I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt there

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Is this just my copy? The cover was put on backwards, so all the text is upside down...

Edit: Pics or it didn't happen. Edit-2: Formatting.

Book 'Unix in a Nutshell' with cover folded to demonstrate cover was printed upside-down from text.  Book is placed sideways on a kitchen countertop

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In polish we have an idiom for rare books that directly translates to 'white crow'. Incidentally French say 'merle blanc' - 'white blackbird'. French influenced polish a lot during late modernity. Anyway where was I.

Ah, yeah likely not very rare, they must have messed a whole print run and decided to sell it off anyway, maybe at a discount, since it's not a limited hardback illuminated Shakespeare's works in 5 tomes.

Then again... Weirder things have collection value.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

White housefly in Portuguese.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My friend put this one together a while ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

screams in horror

[–] psud 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The camel book was on perl. It had no hope of being taken seriously

This is the legit cover

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Drop table animals, is clearly the best one.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Obligatory meme versions (contain strong language):

Oh no

Oh f--k

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Share your O'Reilly tomes here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Nice! I picked up a good classic myself at a thrift store a couple months ago.

I like one of the first lines in the first chapter: "The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah. I remember that book from college. Only like 100 pages or so, right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

About 260 if you don't count the function reference at the back. There sure wasn't much to it back then. Compared to the monster that is C++. I can maybe see why Linus doesn't like it and prefers C. There's a hundred different ways to do one thing, and it could get out of hand, and there's a lot of complex stuff in the libraries that you're dependent on. For low-level programming it's basically like "trust me, bro".

It's great for me though that can't program worth a shit and have all the algorithms ready to go.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

In high school I had Sun sparc 5 And then an ultra 60, Solaris was a pretty sweet OS back in the day

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How did you get a Sun Sparc 5 and Ultra 60 as a high school student? You were able to get them used from a college that had recently upgraded or something?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

In the late 90s they were a couple hundred bucks on eBay. Passed their usefulness as workstations. I still have the ultra 60 but couldn’t find a scsi three hard drive to replace the original when it died

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Hmm, if you could find a SCSI3->2 adapter, and then a SCSI->CompactFlash drive, you might be able to cobble a working solution together?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I think you need a blue SCSI.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Solaris? The OS that shipped with nothing installed, not even a compiler? Yeah, it was like, so great.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Macromedia flash... Damn that takes me back.

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[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 7 points 5 months ago

Oh I remember this one, nice find.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Oh wow.

ugh.pdf
360 pages
Chapter 1: Things are going to get worse before they get worse

:)

[–] bruhduh 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] EightLeggedFreak 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, is there a reason that this looks like me?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Solaris brings back memories lol. Haven't touched one of those in decades!

[–] meiti 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cool. I noticed I have seen the author's name in TUHS mailing list. He's still posting there sometimes.

[–] Telodzrum 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He wrote a bunch of these books, they’re still quite useful for foundational and historical knowledge on the subjects.

[–] meiti 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Another book on the history of unix is UNIX: A History and a Memoir from Kernighan. It was a joy to read.

[–] Telodzrum 2 points 5 months ago

Adding it to my reading list, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Here is one of my collection of O’Reilly books. Not actually mine, but my father’s. It’s published in 1995 by a Japanese publisher.

photo of “learning the vi”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Supah kool!

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[–] jordanlund 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Similarly, here’s me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I had a copy of that book to, also bought it circa year 2000.

[–] Anticorp 2 points 5 months ago

That's pretty cool that the company chose to support those 5 customers instead of just telling them to get windows or get bent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I have the same book!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Those dead, cold eyes....

[–] Sir_Simon_Spamalot 2 points 5 months ago

Damn, I used to have that...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I have/had a bunch of these books. Some got lost but I have the electronic versions of them.

This is one other book I fondly remember. UNIX For Application Developers. From 1991 I think. I vaguely remember a statement in the intro along the lines of Windows being user friendly but UNiX being expert friendly. :-)

Couldn't find a better image.

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