Linux and the Unix Philosophy

Rating:
Summary: Gancarz is a philosopher
Review: * * * * *

Five stars for "Linux and the Unix Philosophy" because foremost it is an excellent discussion of the importance of the Open Source revolution.

Also, what this text does is not to repeat the basic Unix design's principles e.g. 'everything in Unix is a file' e.t.c., but instead it focuses in some inspiring and innovative approaches to software engineering, mostly applied in the GNU/Linux world.

It finaly proves in many ways the superiority of GNU/Linux - and Unix in general - in contrast to the other "desktop" systems.

One thing I enjoyed the most is the parallelism between some Unix tenets and corresponding real life examples. Having read a lot of texts about Unix and Open Source Software I deeply recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Gancarz is a philosopher
Review: * * * * *

Five stars for "Linux and the Unix Philosophy" because foremost it is an excellent discussion of the importance of the Open Source revolution.

Also, what this text does is not to repeat the basic Unix design's principles e.g. 'everything in Unix is a file' e.t.c., but instead it focuses in some inspiring and innovative approaches to software engineering, mostly applied in the GNU/Linux world.

It finaly proves in many ways the superiority of GNU/Linux - and Unix in general - in contrast to the other "desktop" systems.

One thing I enjoyed the most is the parallelism between some Unix tenets and corresponding real life examples. Having read a lot of texts about Unix and Open Source Software I deeply recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Read
Review: Few books can really do a proper job of talking about philosophy vis-a-vis software development. Mike Gancarz finally delivers--and wonderfully--on such an attempt. It can not only broaden your mind, but also improve the quality of the software you develop (if you're a programmer).

You needn't necessarily be a programmer to appreciate this book, there is no code or assumption that you have any development skills whatsoever. You should at least really appreciate software systems as works of architecture. I'll leave it at that.

My *only* criticism is that at times I wasn't quite in tune with the author's sense of humor, but that's my only criticism.

I highly recommend this book.