Unix General Discussion

[Bandit Bill]

Even though the Mac mini is often described as cute etc. Underneath it's friendly GUI lies a very powerful, very mean operating system known as UNIX.

I'd like to invite those of you who wish to dig a little deeper into your mini's OS to join me in a general UNIX discussion.

First off I'd like to say that I picked up a book titled "Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger" written by Dave Taylor and published by O'Reilly to begin my Unix learning experience ISBN 0-596-00915-1.

Learning Unix command lines for OS X is similar to learning DOS on a Windows box. You can get through life without it, but to truly understand your system and to take full advantage of the power of your OS it is worth learning.

Use this thread to discuss software, security, tips and tricks, questions... what ever.

[WC3_Gamer]

How's the book, does it explain EVERYTHING? because I don't know anything about UNIX. If it's not too easy to understand, maybe there's a UNIX for Dummies book out there that I could pickup and read a bit, but that won't be for awhile, I STILL HAVEN'T ORDERED MY MINI!!!
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Gone.

[Bandit Bill]

The book is excellent for beginners to the Unix world. If you use Unix everyday the book will be too basic. The explanations are excellent and easy to follow without treating you like an idiot.

I usually don't waste my money on books anymore because I usually end up reading a few chapters and never look at them again. The first time I picked the book up I liked the way it was written. I didn't buy it then (even though it's only $20 USD). I called my Unix geek older brother and asked him if I should buy it. He said there are so many online resources that you would be wasting $20.

However, I went back to the bookstore and looked at the book again. It's 250 pages full of stuff I don't know. It would take more work and effort to compile this info than it would be worth. I'm happy I bought it. It seems to be written for me.

I think it would look good on a resume to have a basic understanding of Unix. That's worth more than $20.

[iMav]

There are plenty of UNIX vets here, so if there are UNIX questions out there...fire away!
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-=iMav=-
http://geekhack.org

[Susurrus]

Another great UNIX book is The Mac OS X Command Line: Unix Under the Hood. It's great as a tutorial as well as a reference book. I prefer these styles of books, so it's perfect for me. ISBN: 0-7821-4354-7.

Of course, I still won't really like computer books until they're able to be parsed by Spotlight, .
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Computer Engineer
Junior, Brown University
15" NC8430 HP Laptop
1.42Ghz PPC Mac Mini, 1Gb RAM, 1st Gen
40GB G4 iPod
2GB Black iPod Nano

[Bandit Bill]

[wala]

I also am thrilled with the UNIX core of my mini, and as so, I have bought two books from my local bookstore: Teach Yourself UNIX, and Learning the bash Shell. They are general guids into UNIX and I've learned a lot from both. The first one is a step-by-step guide which is written for people who have never used any computer before, though it does have a comprehensive intro with all the nasic commands covered. The second one focuses more on shell programming, and if you want to learn UNIX from it you have to skip a few chapter, yet it's handy to have around nonetheless, since bash is the Terminal's main shell type.
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Mac Mini 1.25 Ghz, 512 Mb RAM