MetaLearn: Unix

05 Jan, 2024

I decided to learn a bit about UNIX (because it is maybe quite important).

TL;DR

• Make simple tools that do one thing well and are easy to connect.
• UNIX is simple standards in constant warfare against advanced mess.

The more I dug around, the more I realized that the job of explaining UNIX has already been done many times over. (It would be a complete failure of the developer community if systems from the 1970s that both MacOS and Linux are based on weren't well described.)

If you are not a programmer I recommend to just go your way, and if you kinda are, learn to use Linux (command line) before figuring out what and why UNIX is.

The general idea of UNIX (UNIX is a design philosophy for operating systems) is that you make many small tools that each do their one job well and are easy to connect together (for a developer). The backside is that those small tools are hard to combine for a non-programmer, and the entire system is not designed for perfect reliability, stuff breaks all the time, and the interface is hard to use. (Which is why Windows didn't use UNIX and made all in one software that is harder to maintain for developers, but works well for enterprise customers.)

There are complaints about UNIX being outdated as it is stuck supporting old code and bandaid features, and has a hard time integrating 21st century features it was never designed for. A problem of old standards (just like in many other things the ISO and others have been dealing with since ever.)

Since the job of describing the endless amounts of unix history, details, and nuances has already been done for me, I will just leave some links to resources and (not) waste your time.

Resources

Don't go on YouTube (or Google), it mostly has "Fancy Tech Guys" pretending like they know what they are talking about (with dramatic music in the background).

You could try reading some old books about UNIX but they are probably going to be to technical and for an audience from 50 years ago.

First. Go read Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

Then go on Hackernews¹ and it will have everything from UNIX History to Tips and Tricks mixed with loads of other information. (Note: The link tagged to Hackernews is not the actual website but a hackernews search engine by algolia.com Check footnote for the real website.)

- very qualified unix expert