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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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 128 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

This is the only one I know.

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is only one corner of it.

[–] e1219@lemm.ee 34 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

[–] magikmw@lemm.ee 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.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

White housefly in Portuguese.

[–] Plavatos@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My friend put this one together a while ago.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

screams in horror

[–] psud@lemmy.world 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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[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Drop table animals, is clearly the best one.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 22 points 1 year ago
[–] palordrolap@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

Obligatory meme versions (contain strong language):

Oh no

Oh f--k

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Share your O'Reilly tomes here.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 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."

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 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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[–] zcd@lemmy.ca 10 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

[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 8 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?

[–] zcd@lemmy.ca 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

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 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?

[–] ramius345@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

I think you need a blue SCSI.

[–] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Solaris is actually kinda cool now. It was based on a great OS and actually has been improved since.

We can't do much about who owns it, but I'm glad to see someone's looking after it -- unlike when IBM found the loophole and reverted AT&T Unix ownership back to novell to just rot. Good job.

[–] supertinkers@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Macromedia flash... Damn that takes me back.

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[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Oh I remember this one, nice find.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Oh wow.

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

:)

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] meiti@lemmy.world 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@lemmy.world 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@lemmy.world 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.

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[–] fin@sh.itjust.works 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”

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Supah kool!

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[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

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

Damn, I used to have that...

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 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.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] marcdw@lemmy.ml 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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