Foundational Unix Papers, Books, and Videos

Last updated — Jun 05, 2025
First published — Sep 22, 2023
#unix #bsd #gnu #linux

Original Unix, BSD, GNU, and Linux books, papers, videos, and similar materials.

Article Collection

This article is part of the following series:

1. Unix

Table of Contents

Introduction

This article lists documents, books, and audio-video materials relevant for understanding Unix and all systems derived from it.

Original Unix documents are important for two reasons:

First, as expected, they are relevant for understanding the history and principles on which Unix, the Internet, and modern software is based.

Second, equally important, they are useful for understanding the unsurpassed combination of simplicity and power in Unix. Being familiar with it comes handy when using Unix-based systems, but it has broader effects, making one’s own solutions more powerful and elegant.

There are a lot of documents listed, sorted by category and date. You are not expected to read them all at once or in order:

If you want to learn about the Unix culture, feel free to start with some videos, for example the light-hearted 2019 BWK’s Interview with Ken Thompson and 2016 Interview with Brian W. Kernighan, followed by 1988 Bill Joy's Talk at IBM Yorktown, and then check out popular books.

If you want to learn about Unix itself, start with the foundations and one or two manuals, followed by for example some videos.

It is expected that you will refer back to this list repeatedly over time, focusing on your current subfields of interest.

Foundations

Important Unix papers and documents:

UNIX Programmer’s Manuals

Doug McIlroy organized “Unix Programmer’s Manuals” to be written, and editions of manual became the versions of Unix they were describing.

The manuals consisted of manpages and papers. They are user-oriented, i.e. they do not discuss Unix internals, OS design principles, or C programming.

The editions were:

Please note that above links point mostly to resources hosted at https://www.tuhs.org/. In chapter AT&T / Bell Labs Unix Releases a bit more contextual information on each edition can be found, along with alternative links pointing to https://gunkies.org/.

Books and materials related to Unix:

Videos

Unix videos and documentaries:

Video Collections

Magazines

Other Resources

Misc links and resources, mostly to collections of books, papers, and documents.

Modern Code

Article Collection

This article is part of the following series:

1. Unix

Automatic Links

The following links appear in the article:

1. For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution - For-Fun-and-Profit-A-History-of-the-Free-and-Open-Source-Software-Revolution.pdf
2. Odd Comments and Strange Doings in Unix
3. Software Tools - Software-Tools.pdf
4. The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin - http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051013231901859
5. ZIP File With the Book and Code - https://archive.org/details/CommentarySixthEditionUNIX
6. The UNIX Programming Environment - https://archive.org/details/UNIXProgrammingEnvironment
7. A Quarter Century of Unix - https://archive.org/details/aquartercenturyofunixpeterh.salus_201910
8. The Cathedral and the Bazaar - https://archive.org/details/cathedral-bazaar
9. Computer Chronicles - https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles
10. Software Tools in Pascal - https://archive.org/details/softwaretoolsinp00kern
11. Elements of Programming Style - https://archive.org/details/the-elements-of-programming-style-second-edition/
12. UNIX REVIEW - https://archive.org/details/unixreview?sort=date
13. Unix Programmer's Manual, 8th Edition - https://archive.org/details/unixtimesharingsystemprogrammersmanualeighthedition
14. Unix World - https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Unix+World%22&sort=-date
15. Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) - https://bofh.bjash.com/
16. AT&T / Bell Labs Unix Releases - https://crystallabs.io/unix-bsd-gnu-linux-history/#att--bell-labs-unix-releases
17. A Commentary on the Sixth Edition Unix Operating System - https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf
18. Reflections on Software Research - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1283920.1283939
19. The UNIX Time-Sharing System - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361011.361061
20. Review of "Software Tools" - https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1110841.1110847
21. Alternative Link - https://dspinellis.github.io/oral-history-of-unix/index.html
22. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell
23. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Chronicles
24. Doug McIlroy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy
25. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution
26. SeL4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#High_assurance:_seL4
27. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code
28. List of Episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Computer_Chronicles_episodes
29. Microkernel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel
30. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language
31. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)
32. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style
33. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_Crackdown
34. Wikipedia Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix_Programming_Environment
35. Xv6 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv6
36. The C Programming Language - https://github.com/AzatAI/cs_books/blob/master/The.C.Programming.Language.2nd.Edition.pdf
37. Unix History Repository - https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
38. The Design of the Unix Operating System - https://github.com/jyfc/ebook/blob/master/03_operating_system/the_design_of_the_unix_operating_system.pdf
39. UNIX Implementation - https://github.com/manjunath5496/Ken-Thompson-papers/blob/master/ken(6).pdf
40. Hello World (Plan 9 and UTF-16) - https://github.com/manjunath5496/Ken-Thompson-papers/blob/master/ken(9).pdf
41. Ken Thompson's Papers - https://github.com/manjunath5496/Ken-Thompson-papers/tree/master
42. UX/RT - https://gitlab.com/uxrt/uxrt-toplevel
43. https://gunkies.org/
44. Lions Operating System (LionsOS) - https://lionsos.org/
45. Program Design in the UNIX System Environment - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2012-11/pdfGsAjwogf3t.pdf
46. Linux Weekly News (LWN.net) - https://lwn.net/
47. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - https://oceanofpdf.com/authors/steven-levy/pdf-epub-hackers-heroes-of-the-computer-revolution-download/
48. Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project - https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html
49. Unix Programmer's Manual, 7th Edition - https://s3.amazonaws.com/plan9-bell-labs/7thEdMan/index.html
50. Unix Programmer's Manual, 10th Edition - https://web.archive.org/web/20150611142736/http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/10thEdMan/index.html
51. Alternative Download at TUHS - https://wiki.tuhs.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=publications:qcu.pdf
52. Advanced Unix Programming - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131411543
53. Advanced Unix Programming - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FIZKNYE
54. Dennis M. Ritchie's Homepage at Bell Labs - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/
55. The UNIX Time-Sharing System - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.pdf
56. The Development of the C Language - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html
57. C Reference Manual - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cman.pdf
58. Proposing a Unix Portability Experiment - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/firstport.html
59. The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing System - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html
60. Five Little Languages and How They Grew: Talk at HOPL - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hopl.html
61. Portability of C Programs and the UNIX System - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/portpap.pdf
62. The UNIX Time-Sharing System - A Retrospective - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/retro.pdf
63. Interprocess Communication in the Ninth Edition Unix System - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/spe.pdf
64. A Stream Input-Output System - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/st.pdf
65. A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts From the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986 - https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf
66. Afterword - https://www.mit.edu/hacker/afterword.html
67. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier - https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
68. O'Reilly Open Books - https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/
69. Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software - https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/
70. Open Sources: Voices From the Open Source Revolution, 1st Edition - https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/
71. Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing - https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/osfreesoft/book/
72. Diomidis Spinellis - https://www.spinellis.gr/
73. https://www.tuhs.org/
74. Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v2/v2man.pdf
75. Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd Edition - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v3/
76. Unix Programmer's Manual, 4th Edition - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v4/
77. Unix Programmer's Manual, 5th Edition - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v5/
78. Unix Programmer's Manual, 6th Edition - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v6/
79. UNIX PROGRAM DESCRIPTION - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/unix_program_description_jan_1976.pdf
80. An Oral History of Unix - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/OralHistory/
81. History of UNIX - https://www.tuhs.org/Mirror/Hauben/unix-Contents.html
82. ;Login: - https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline
83. UNIX Videos From AT&T Tech Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ATTTechChannel/search?query=unix
84. Alternative YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerChroniclesYT/videos
85. Computer History Museum's Oral Histories - https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerHistory/search?query=unix%20oral%20history
86. BWK's Interview With Ken Thompson - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o
87. Interview With Jon 'Maddog' Hall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZMA3Ge144U
88. A Chronicle of the Unix Wars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffh3DRFzRL0
89. X Window System Design Principles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdmNHM9BKY0
90. The History of X Window System (X11) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-N-fgKWYGU
91. VCF East 10 Interview With Brian W. Kernighan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUWt_StXKsY
92. Warner Losh's FOSDEM Talk5-14 on the Forgotten History of Early Unix - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuzeagzQwRs
93. The UNIX System: Making Computers Easier to Use - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw
94. The History of Unix; Rob Pike's Experience - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs
95. A Political History of X - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj02_UeUnGQ
96. Origins of the C Programming Language - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2Hsvxaf8M
97. Video of V0 Unix Running on a PDP-7 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaPaWyiuLA
98. An Interview With Ken Thompson, With an Intro by B. W. Kernighan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKNaCzdn6sY
99. Bill Joy's Talk at IBM Yorktown - https://youtu.be/EmC5yoE_7PY
100. A UNIX TM Operating System for the DEC VAX-11/780 Computer - unix-32v-reconstructed-draft1.pdf