A Quarter Century of Unix

by Peter H. Salus

UNIX is a software system that is simple, elegant, portable, and powerful. It grew in popularity without the benefit of a large marketing organization. Programmers kept using it; big companies kept fighting it. After a decade, it was clear that the users had won. A Quarter Century of UNIX is the first book to explain this incredible success, using the words of its creators, developers and users to illustrate how the sociology of a technical group can overwhelm the intent of multi-billion-dollar corporations. In preparing to write this book, Peter Salus interviewed over 100 of these key figures and gathered relevant information from Australia to Austria. This is the book that turns UNIX folklore into UNIX history.
provides the first documented history of the development of the UNIX operating system, includes interviews with over 100 key figures in the UNIX community, contains classic photos and illustrations, and explains why UNIX succeeded.

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

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 1994

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my instructors left this for free in our breakroom. I don't have much experience with unix and I don't claim to be some sort of arbiter of knowledge myself, that's why I read this book. I've used Ubuntu off and on for a few years now.

The copy of the book that I had was filled with "what about X?" Where Salus would make some claim and my instructor would challenge his knowledge of it with some other piece of technology or event. I would then proceed to fact check Salus and my instructor appears to be right. For example starting in chapter 2 he appears to have inaccurately described the Altair 8080 which was a computer on a chip, not a computer on a board as he says.

I read mostly because I wanted to start getting into unix more. I find reading the history of things really motivates me. There were so many little inaccuracies that this really detracted from learning about unix's history from Salus or just lack of detail. I feel like if you're going to talk about bell labs and the DARPA history you need more interviews, otherwise why bring it up?

[Pawan W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally completed it. Took me a year of procrastination and again starting anew, it’s a small book though but sometimes gets harder as there is very less to relate it in today’s times. The narration of interviews and getting those aligned is really good and tells a story how unix was possible and I am glad that they were on surface for the lawsuits which trailed with unix every year as it was growing. The key idea I got from the advent of unix is that they did it for their sake and with genuine passion which can be seen and understood by every researcher out there and that struck me in a good way. But, as the book is old it has its difficulties of understanding the old system and multiple characters being introduced (well they mention who is who at the end but you already go through book to know them :>) is hard to connect the story until the reader is genuinely interested in systems and have used unix or Linux system. Anyway a good read for a geek like me :) .

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

For people looking into the history of computing, this should be a must read, given how much UNIX and its culture has influenced it.

Despite the fact that some parts are a bit dated now (after all it was written in 1994), it contains multiple interviews with people involved at the beginnings of many tools that are still used today. It presents an interesting perspective about the dynamics between companies and universities at the time. I especially enjoyed the first chapters about the history of Calculating & Computing, and of the Operating Systems.

Another interesting thing is that the last chapter (What Made it Work) contains some remarks regarding Software Engineering practices that can be seen in the new movement of DevOps: "avoid compartmentalizing researchers and developers" (Devs / Ops), using small groups of people (Bezos' 2 pizza rule), etc...

[Graham Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting social history describing all of UNIX from Bell Labs to the BSDi lawsuit. My only problem is that this quarter century of UNIX was published 24 years ago so I want to read the sequel 😂

[Bhaskar Chowdhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! It is a joy ride and many kudos to Peter for narrating in such a lively fashion. This book is worth a billion dollar. Rightly and importantly correctly converying the inculcated culture provided by the UNIX developers and enthusists.

Enjoyed very much .... :)

[László · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is an excellent, nine technical, review about the beginning of Unix.

[Ernesto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ken Thompson is to programming what Newton is to physics. I learned a lot about UNIX history from this book.

[KerbenII]

mentioned in UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th edition)

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been pecking away at this book off and on for two months. Part of the reason it's taking me so long to read the book is that I keep stopping to look up the command being discussed - and end up down a rabbit hole to see how it's being implemented on my Mac (running Mojave – Mac OS has been fully Unix-compliant since High Sierra).

In order to have confidence in a technology, I need to know how it was developed - and how it works today. This backgrounder is giving me the confidence I've long lacked to dive more deeply into Unix and Linux-based command line.

[Austin Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a great early history of UNIX and related topics, primarily through the words of the people involved. Several themes were mentioned, such as the role of the law and how it affected users. More development of these themes would have been nice. Despite being published in 1994, it felt like the discussion ended around the mid 80s.

[TK Keanini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great history of UNIX. If you are putting together a trivia game and one of the categories is UNIX, you can get a lot out of this book.

[Alain van Hoof · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for everybody who loves UNIX

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A serviceable history of the beginning and development of Unix. Sometimes compelling, but often a bit dry.

[Eric Secrist · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was a little dis-jointed, it didn't flow well. However, there are some interesting excerpts from Unix legends such as Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Bill Joy