From: "Vince Scheib" Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:05:43 -0400 To: > do you know about unix? Unix is a word used to refer to many unix-like operating systems (One of which was really called unix a long time ago). Many computers are designed with the intent of having unix run on them, but there is a separation between machine and operating system. The operating system is just the software which takes care of running other software. IE, windows allows you to run lots of programs that are written to run on windows. Linux is a unix-like operating system designed to run on the same kinds of computers that run Windows. Unix was designed for the older, bigger, shared computers. An important trait is that many users can be logged in at once. For this, you usually think of a unix machine as some big computer far away, and you're connecting to it. In the old days, dumb terminals sat on people's desks. These weren't really "computers", just the bare necessities to connect to a computer (keyboard, monitor, and a little tiny bit of thinking). The basic way to use a unix machine is by telnet and a command prompt. Telnet is a program. It is very simple. It sends text in two directions, from you to elsewhere, and vice versa. A command prompt is a way to issue commands and start programs. DOS (Disk Operating System) is a command prompt operating system. You type text like "type textfile.txt" and stuff happens. You unix machines also have graphical user interfaces (GUIs pronounced Gooey). Windows is a GUI. Apple computers have a GUI (these days). unix machines even let you use a GUI when you're not really at the computer. That's call Xwindows. If you use unix machines, you'll probably only use the text interface. From your windows machine you can easily connect that way. You could, if you wanted, connect with xwindows. You'd have to install special software to do that, however. If you go to a computer lab, there very well may be unix terminals (perhaps even dumb ones) you can use for the unix systems. Why would you use unix? Well, many things that do things for a long time, reliably, and for many people, run on unix. Email, web page servers, telephone systems, printers and print managers, big computational thingies, air traffic control, are all examples. Why would YOU use unix? Well, posting web pages is done (usually) on unix machines (and when it's not unix, it's done in very unix ways). Some software like Mathematica is probably available there -- and if you had to let it crunch number for days you'd want it to happen on a unix server. If you had computer files you wanted to open anywhere on campus, instead of carrying them you just save them to your unix account. The unix methodology is to have many very small programs that do a simple thing. Want to copy a file? Use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Want to launch a program, just use a command prompt unless you really need that whole big & slow GUI. et cetera. The result is that you can not use unix without some reference. Many things in windows aren't so hard to figure out because 1) they're visual, just look and experiment with things and 2) there's online help available that is much easier to use than the help available from a command line. Is there really a reason for you to use unix? Probably not. Is it a useful thing to know how to use, quite. Would you really find it useful, no. Unless, of course, you had to use it, but you probably don't. I walk through minefields and watch your head rock. -- Vincent Scheib <<><>> http://www.scheib.net/