THE VIDEO SHELF · unix design history
"What UNIX Cost Us" - Benno Rice (LCA 2020)
Benno Rice's linux.conf.au 2020 talk asks whether UNIX was the best design we could have had. He looks at what alternatives existed, what was gained and lost, and what could be re-learned, including the limits of treating everything as a file.
Why HN readers recommended it
Recommended as an insightful and entertaining critique of UNIX design choices such as file descriptors and 'everything is a file'.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- linux.conf.au
- Topic
- unix design history
- Format
- talk
- Level
- intermediate
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2022–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I'll second this recommendation! Benno Rice is an insightful, energetic, witty, and just plain enjoyable tech speaker. 'What UNIX Cost Us'[1] is another favorite of mine that the audience on this post might enjoy: [VIDEO]
pxc on Hacker News · 2024-08
In Systemd, 10 years later: a historical and technical retrospective (2020)> for instance, Linux handles network socket, special files (like /proc/cpuinfo) or even USB devices as files. This is a powerful idea that can make easy to write or use programs for linux since we can rely in a set of well known operations from …
favorited on Hacker News · 2025-03
In Exploring Polymorphism in C: Lessons from Linux and FFmpeg's Code Design (2019)Not the author but I recommend: "What UNIX cost us" by Benno Rice: [VIDEO] In fact, this video argues that file descriptors are not as good as the author claims in their opening paragraph. They are another runaway idiosyncrasy borne out of the "everything is …
sph on Hacker News · 2023-12
In Reforming Unix
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.