ugh.book

xx Preface

Deficient by Design

The original Unix solved a problem and solved it well, as did the Roman

numeral system, the mercury treatment for syphilis, and carbon paper. And

like those technologies, Unix, too, rightfully belongs to history. It was

developed for a machine with little memory, tiny disks, no graphics, no

networking, and no power. In those days it was mandatory to adopt an atti-

tude that said:

• “Being small and simple is more important than being complete and
  correct.”


• “You only have to solve 90% of the problem.”


• “Everything is a stream of bytes.”

These attitudes are no longer appropriate for an operating system that hosts

complex and important applications. They can even be deadly when Unix

is used by untrained operators for safety-critical tasks.

Ironically, the very attributes and design goals that made Unix a success

when computers were much smaller, and were expected to do far less, now

impede its utility and usability. Each graft of a new subsystem onto the

underlying core has resulted in either rejection or graft vs. host disease with

its concomitant proliferation of incapacitating scar tissue. The Unix net-

working model is a cacophonous Babel of Unreliability that quadrupled the

size of Unix’s famed compact kernel. Its window system inherited the

cryptic unfriendliness of its character-based interface, while at the same

time realized new ways to bring fast computers to a crawl. Its new system

administration tools take more time to use than they save. Its mailer makes

the U.S. Postal Service look positively stellar.

The passing years only magnify the flaws. Using Unix remains an unpleas-

ant experience for beginners and experts alike. Despite a plethora of fine

books on the subject, Unix security remains an elusive goal at best. Despite

increasingly fast, intelligent peripherals, high-performance asynchronous I/

O is a pipe dream. Even though manufacturers spend millions developing

“easy-to-use” graphical user interfaces, few versions of Unix allow you to

do anything but trivial system administration without having to resort to

the 1970s-style teletype interface. Indeed, as Unix is pushed to be more and

more, it instead becomes less and less. Unix cannot be fixed from the

inside. It must be discarded.