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 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] someguy3 31 points 1 year ago

This is the only one I know.

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

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

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

That is only one corner of it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

White housefly in Portuguese.

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

My friend put this one together a while ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

screams in horror

[–] psud 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago

Drop table animals, is clearly the best one.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Obligatory meme versions (contain strong language):

Oh no

Oh f--k

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

Share your O'Reilly tomes here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

I think you need a blue SCSI.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

Macromedia flash... Damn that takes me back.

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[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 7 points 1 year ago

Oh I remember this one, nice find.

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

Oh wow.

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

:)

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

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] meiti 3 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

Adding it to my reading list, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

Supah kool!

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

Similarly, here’s me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Anticorp 2 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

I have the same book!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Those dead, cold eyes....

[–] Sir_Simon_Spamalot 2 points 1 year ago

Damn, I used to have that...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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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