alt.hn

5/19/2026 at 2:56:42 AM

Peter Salus has died

 https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2026-May/033750.html

by speckx

5/19/2026 at 3:41:20 AM

Quarter century of UNIX sounds interesting.

I found at least 1 copy in the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/aquartercenturyofunixpeterh.salu...

The cover looks redacted, as the "Sex, Drugs" from "Sex, Drugs, Unix" was removed. Hopefully the content wasn't censored as well.

by TZubiri

5/19/2026 at 5:59:28 PM

anna's archive has it in a 20MB Pdf. you can find a link for that archive on the Wikipedia for the Anna's archive.

by Projectiboga

5/20/2026 at 8:51:32 AM

No thank you. I recommend not downloading stuff from a website that cannot hold a Domain for longer than a year and forces you to learn what the 'real domain' is and asks you not to fall for any imposters.

If not for legal reasons, then for security reasons.

The Internet Archive doesn't have to evade law enforcement and doesn't ask you to put your systems at risk.

by TZubiri

5/19/2026 at 3:54:49 AM

His name shows up everywhere in the Unix bibliography but I'll be honest — I've used A Quarter Century of Unix mostly as a lookup for specific stories rather than reading it cover-to-cover. For folks who read it as it came out: where would you point someone today who wants the full sweep? It's hard to tell from outside which of his books hold up as essential vs. which show their age.

Tangent, but: is anyone doing comparable oral-history work for the current LLM moment? It feels like a lot of it is going to survive only as scattered blog posts and conference talks, and I don't know who's playing the role Salus did for Unix.

by armada1122

5/19/2026 at 3:39:11 AM

During college, his Unix history book was the first one I read that actually made the AT&T => BSD => linux throughline make sense. RIP.

by oldspleen

5/19/2026 at 8:06:16 AM

We should honor these people when they turn 80, then they get to see all the love and respect themselves!

by Tepix

5/19/2026 at 9:53:34 AM

Let's make it 70 - otherwise even if the tradition started 15 years ago, Dennis Ritchie wouldn't be included.

by Tade0

5/19/2026 at 7:55:51 AM

RIP. I've actually found the Handbook of Programming Languages (4 volumes) that he edited much more useful than his Unix history.

I met him in a few conferences, back in the day. We ended up talking more about linguistics than Unix history, somehow.

by zvr

5/19/2026 at 4:03:25 AM

He was also executive director of both the USENIX Association in its very early years.

by YesThatTom2

5/19/2026 at 4:32:36 AM

RIP a legend. Thanks for preserving Unix history.

by farwaabbas

5/19/2026 at 4:36:15 AM

Rest in peace, Mister Salus.

by krylon

5/19/2026 at 3:37:32 AM

RIP a goat

by Abh1Works

5/19/2026 at 3:47:00 AM

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by drekipus

5/19/2026 at 10:09:58 AM

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by liberian

5/19/2026 at 5:03:51 AM

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by Trofi_C

5/19/2026 at 4:40:39 AM

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by aminekhd

5/19/2026 at 3:35:15 AM

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by jocelyner