QuarterCenturyOfUnix

Last edit December 4, 2006

By PeterSalus. ISBN 0201547775

A gripping tale of how a system grew from a PDP with 4kB of core to today's 4GB workstations. It does a pretty good job of conveying the spirit and design in which the system was conceived.

The book pretty approachable to the nonspecialist -- it doesn't assume you know what an ioctl(2) is, or even ls(1). But I'm not sure how interesting it would be to people who don't like Unix at least a little bit. It's more enjoyable if you can think `wow, imagine dc(1) running off a paper tape' as you go.

We now have a GigaSecondOfUnix, measuring from the time(2) epoch. The clock struck 10^9 seconds in September 2001. 2^30 seconds (the computer engineer's Giga) is a while later.

From 1970/01/01 00:00:00,

10^9 seconds -> 2001/09/09 01:46:40
2^30 seconds -> 2004/01/10 13:37:04

Salus' latest, TheDaemonTheGnuAndThePenguin, also covers UnixHistory.

CategoryBook CategoryUnix