If you are p...'d off with creeping featurism in grossly bloated software that demands a CPU of ever-increasing capacity, and blue screens that accuse you of illegal activity, this book reveals a better way.

The author observes that Microsoft Windows "software developers must go out of their way to make the operating system easier to use for the novice user .... [and] UNIX makes no attempt to satisfy the ease-of-use concerns of novices users .... [; however,] Linux attempts to bridge this gap between the novice and expert user by providing a choice of GUIs" [but still provides access to] "the really complex stuff .... via text-based command-line interfaces". If you want to understand why informed computer users are moving to Linux, this is the book to read."

In 1994 Mike Gancarz, the author of Linux and the UNIX Philosophy, persuaded Digital Equipment Corporation to fund a visit to the United States by Linus Torvalds to talk about his project. In 1995 Gancarz's book, The UNIX Philosophy was published, and in more recent times he was asked to do a Linux edition. Linux and the UNIX Philosophy is the result: a book that shows "how Linux addresses the computing needs of the new millennium in new, exciting ways while preserving the tenets of the original UNIX philosophy".

The book is not about programming or running Linux, or eye-glazing details of "command parameters, programatic interfaces, and such". It is primarily about concepts, but also presents concrete examples of why the use of Linux is growing. The author cites the case of Google:
 
".... Google doesn't employ huge RISC servers from the major UNIX system vendors. It uses more than 10,000 off-brand Intel-based PCs running Linux in a cluster arrangement. The PCs are rack-mounted and connected by 100-Mbps network links. So the world's fastest text search engine runs on cheap, small PCs using a free, open-source operating system.

"Not only is smaller better, it's cheaper, too. The calculation of Microsoft licence fees for 10,000 PCs is left as an exercise for the reader".

You don't have to know anything about programming, or struggle with example code, to be able to read this book. Any informed lay reader with a modicum of computer literacy will be able to follow the narrative and comprehend the technical descriptions. However, bear in mind that there are many experts-and pseudo experts-with a vested interest in promoting Microsoft Windows; it is what they know and what some of them live off. Don't be surprised if you run into arguments.
 

Mike Gancarz: Linux and the UNIX Philosophy ISBN 1-5555-273-7 Published by Digital Press, 220 pp., RRP $85.25 incl. GST

Having read this text, if you want to delve further into UNIX/Linux there is another interesting book, The Art of UNIX Programming [Eric Raymond, Addison-Wesley 2004], that is worth reading. It is not about writing code, and does not require any knowledge of programming.

Reprinted from the April 2004 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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