Hacker News with Generative AI: Unix

The Unix-Haters Handbook (wikipedia.org)
The UNIX-HATERS Handbook is a semi-humorous edited compilation of messages to the UNIX-HATERS mailing list.
Operating Systems, Humor, Unix
10 points by rcarmo 3 days ago | 0 comments
Better Shell History Search (tratt.net)
I spend an awful lot of my day in Unix terminals running shell commands. For some reason, the variance in efficiency between different people when using the shell is huge: I know people who can run rings around me, and I’ve come across more than one paid professional who doesn’t use the “up” key to retrieve the previous command.
Shell, Unix, Efficiency, Productivity, Command Line
212 points by ltratt 8 days ago | 93 comments
Better Shell History Search (tratt.net)
I spend an awful lot of my day in Unix terminals running shell commands. For some reason, the variance in efficiency between different people when using the shell is huge: I know people who can run rings around me, and I’ve come across more than one paid professional who doesn’t use the “up” key to retrieve the previous command.
Shell, Unix, Productivity
65 points by todsacerdoti 9 days ago | 25 comments
9base is a port of various original Plan 9 tools for Unix (suckless.org)
9base is a port of various original Plan 9 tools for Unix, based on plan9port.
Operating Systems, Unix, Open Source, Programming, Tools
7 points by keepamovin 11 days ago | 0 comments
Cool, but Obscure X11 Tools (dabamos.de)
A small collection of tools for the X Window System, some more and some less obscure. For cool terminal tools, see Kristof Kovacs’ Cool, but obscure Unix tools. All applications have been tested on FreeBSD but should run on other Unix-like operating systems as well.
Unix, Terminal Tools
31 points by Aldipower 12 days ago | 17 comments
Unix Pipeline Philosophy in HTMX + FastHTML Workflows (mikelev.in)
Future-proof your skills and escape the tech hamster wheel with the Linux, Python, vim & git stack (LPvg) including NixOS, Jupyter, FastHTML / HTMX and an AI stack to resist obsolescence. Follow along as I debunk peak data theory and develop Pipulate, the next generation free AI SEO tool.
Unix, HTMX, Web Development, AI, SEO
5 points by indigodaddy 12 days ago | 0 comments
More pro for the DEC Professional 380 (featuring PRO/VENIX) (blogspot.com)
This particular unit is one of the few artifacts I have left from a massive DEC haul almost twelve years ago. It runs PRO/VENIX, the only official DEC Unix option for the Pros, but in its less common final release (we'll talk about versions of Venix).
Vintage Computing, Operating Systems, DEC, Unix
52 points by classichasclass 18 days ago | 9 comments
Unix Needs a True Integrated Environment: CASE Closed (1989) [pdf] (bitsavers.org)
Unix, Operating Systems, Software Development, History, Computer Science
40 points by todsacerdoti 22 days ago | 26 comments
Ask HN: Old Unix technologies like cron and SSE in modern workflows? (ycombinator.com)
I've been in the industry for over a decade and find myself repeatedly returning to battle-tested UNIX technologies despite the constant stream of new frameworks and tools.
Unix, Software Engineering, Workflows
11 points by hilti 25 days ago | 7 comments
Exploring the Hybrid Debian GNU/KFreeBSD Distribution (linuxjournal.com)
For decades, Linux and BSD have stood as two dominant yet fundamentally different branches of the Unix-like operating system world.
Operating Systems, Linux, BSD, Unix
11 points by dxs 26 days ago | 1 comments
Ask HN: What are your favorite UNIX tools? (ycombinator.com)
Either built-in tools, or those that follow the UNIX philosophy.
Unix, Operating Systems, Tools, Programming, Command Line
11 points by aadhavans 26 days ago | 12 comments
Advertisements of Unix and its technologies from 1984-1998 (m4c.pl)
The 1980s and 1990s were a period of rapid technological advancement, during which UNIX systems and UNIX-based technologies played a significant role in shaping modern computing solutions.
Unix, History, Technology, Computing
8 points by m4c-pl 37 days ago | 0 comments
JSON has become today's machine-readable output format on Unix (utoronto.ca)
Recently, I needed to delete about 1,200 email messages to a particular destination from the mail queue on one of our systems.
JSON, Unix, Email, System Administration
59 points by ingve 38 days ago | 81 comments
1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected (tuhs.org)
Hi everyone, First-time poster here. Near the end of last year, I did some forensic analysis on the DMR tapes (https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes) and had some fun playing around with them. Warren forwarded a few of my emails to this list at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, but it was never my intention for him to be my messenger, so I'm posting here myself now.
Unix, History, Software, Operating Systems, Archive
425 points by henry_flower 42 days ago | 148 comments
Schemesh: Fusion between Unix shell and Lisp REPL (github.com/cosmos72)
Schemesh is an interactive shell scriptable in Lisp.
Lisp, Shell, Programming Languages, Unix
177 points by cosmos0072 46 days ago | 50 comments
Show HN: Mapping the Unix Magic Poster – An Interactive Annotation Project (drio.github.io)
The su command (short for “substitute user” or “switch user”) is used to start a shell under a different user account. Typically, one of the most common uses of su is switching to the superuser (root) account to gain administrative privileges.
Unix, Shell, Security, Programming, Interactive Projects
77 points by drio 50 days ago | 29 comments
Douglas McIlroy responds to Unix spell article with new implementation details (twitter.com)
Unix, Programming, History, Software
163 points by abhi9u 55 days ago | 14 comments
Fiwix: Small Unix-Like Kernel (fiwix.org)
Fiwix is an operating system kernel written from scratch, based on the UNIX architecture and fully focused on being POSIX compatible.
Operating Systems, Unix, Kernel
79 points by coolcoder613 57 days ago | 40 comments
The practical (Unix) problems with .cache and its friends (utoronto.ca)
Unix, Programming, Software, Cache
37 points by ingve 57 days ago | 43 comments
Origins of Common Unix Programs (darwinsys.com)
This is my attempt to show where key parts of the Unix/Linux command hierarchy came from.
Unix, Linux, History, Command Line, Operating Systems
52 points by leonry 73 days ago | 21 comments
The surprising struggle to get a Unix Epoch time from a UTC string in C or C++ (berthub.eu)
So how hard could it be. As input we have something like Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:07:07 in UTC, and we’d like to turn this into 1737094027, the notional (but not actual) number of seconds that have passed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
Programming, C++, Time, Unix
131 points by PascalW 73 days ago | 90 comments
The history and use of /etc/glob in early Unixes (utoronto.ca)
One of the innovations that the V7 Bourne shell introduced was built in shell wildcard globbing, which is to say expanding things like *, ?, and so on.
Unix, Operating Systems, History, Shell, Programming
68 points by zdw 80 days ago | 47 comments
lc: List files in categories (and columns) – from Coherent Unix clone (github.com/gdm85)
This is a port of 'lc' (List files in categories and columns) from MWC (Mark Williams Company) Coherent UNIX.
Unix, Open Source, Software, Programming
78 points by networked 83 days ago | 31 comments
/bin/sh: the biggest Unix security loophole (1984) [pdf] (tuhs.org)
Unix, Security, History, Programming, Operating Systems
101 points by vitplister 84 days ago | 54 comments
Seconds Since the Epoch (aphyr.com)
This is not at all news, but it comes up often enough that I think there should be a concise explanation of the problem. People, myself included, like to say that POSIX time, also known as Unix time, is the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, which was 1970-01-01 at 00:00:00.
Unix, Programming, Time, Software
298 points by zdw 98 days ago | 220 comments
Biggest shell programs (github.com/oils-for-unix)
Programming, Shell Scripting, Unix
259 points by todsacerdoti 117 days ago | 123 comments
Unix Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler (computeradsfromthepast.substack.com)
The worst problems occur when people walk into their office and—without warning—find technology they never asked for.
Unix, History, Technology, Interviews, Magazines
45 points by rbanffy 122 days ago | 13 comments
When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019) (stackexchange.com)
On all Unix-like operating systems, sudo is often provided as the standard package for executing commands as superuser (or an alternative user). When sudo is invoked by the user for the first time, many systems print the following well-known "Sudo Warning":
Unix, Operating Systems, Security, Sudo, History
158 points by Boogie_Man 122 days ago | 176 comments
Disillusioning the Magic of the Fork System Call (codingconfessions.com)
Unix-like operating systems famously use the fork system call for creating a new process. The way this system call works in the user code can be quite bewildering when you first learn about it.
Operating Systems, Unix, Programming
7 points by rbanffy 123 days ago | 1 comments
Disillusioning the Magic of the Fork System Call (codingconfessions.com)
Unix-like operating systems famously use the fork system call for creating a new process.
Operating Systems, Unix, Programming, System Calls
21 points by RojerGS 127 days ago | 0 comments