[TUHS] First book on Unix for general readership

[Michael Usher]

I tried an ngram search on google, and came up with the following:

Richard L. Gauthier. October 1981. Using the Unix System, Reston Publishing
Co.  ISBN 978-0835981644.

That seems to precede the Bourne book.

Available at amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Using-Unix-System-Richard-Gauthier/dp/0835981649

Michael


On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 5:28 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Two thoughts ...
>
> 1.) Lion's was not a general book.  It really was more of a kernel
> 'here-is-how-the-magic-happens.'   It's still the best I know for that.
> BTW:  it did not leak.  It was purchasable from WE.   But the cost was high
> and it was hard to get (you had a price you had a license and could not
> buy/order it at any book store - I don't think it had an ISBN or a library
> congress number originally).
>
> I know a couple of the schools (like CMU) wanted to use it for the OS
> course, but there was some hang-up associated with it in the mid-70s, which
> I don't remember - we did have a couple of sections passed out for a few
> lecture.  But because of how it was bound (and short), it was photocopied s
> others have pointed out.
>
> I think Michigan managed to use the whole thing for their OS course, as I
> seem to remember that both Ted Kowalski and Bill Joy got copies there
> (although my memory is that they both had photocopies not the original
> Orange and Red bindings).  Ted brought it to CMU, which is how I first saw
> it (and I think my original copy was a duplicate of his). And I remember
> seeing a photocopy in wnj's office at UCB.  The first time I saw
> the official Red/Orange bound version was when I ordered it at Tektronix
> from WE a few years later, but I had to leave it there when I went back to
> grad school.
>
>
> 2.) The question asked about general 'Unix' text -- my favorite is still
> Rob and Brian's and I still recommend it (particularly to learn how to
> >>use<< UNIX/Linux today by doing the exercises), but it was not first.
>  Steve's certainly was early and I thought it was a good explanation and
> until Rob and Brian became available was what I suggested when people
> asked.  In fact, early Masscomp system's shipped Bourne's text, until Tim
> wrote the original 'UNIX In a Nutshell' that started his empire.    That
> said, I do seem to remember there was another book around the same time
> (79-80 ish) that had a light blue cover that came from one 'PC-press'
> publishers.   I wish I could remember the author and the name.  I remember
> looking at a copy in Powell's in Portland when it came out and not being
> impressed.
>
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 8:08 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>> Do the Bell Labs technical journals count?  I have a collection of Unix
>> papers that were puled out and published together in two volumes.  That
>> stuff was a gold mine of information in the 80's.
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 07:57:55PM -0400, Ronald Natalie wrote:
>> > The Lions book wasn???t really published back in the day.   It was only
>> targetted at his students in Australia (though copies leaked out).
>> >
>> > The manuals aren???t really a book (and again, they weren???t really
>> published as a book) and most of the prose on UNIX was more in the form of
>> articles than an entire book.
>>
>> --
>> ---
>> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com
>> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>>
>

-- 
Michael Usher
Senior Wireless Network Engineer
University of California, Santa Cruz
musher at ucsc.edu        831-459-3697
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20200405/c5006d98/attachment.html>