Learning UNIX

[treed2@u.washington.edu (T. Reed)]

On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Scott F. Williams wrote:

> Well... I'm learning it right now and it takes commitment for sure. I'm an
> oldskool DOS hound which is a curse as much as a blessing. That is, I can

No doubt. From the standpoint of a new user, UNIX is unfamiliar and as my
Windows-using friends put it, "cryptic".

But, after using Linux as my primary desktop operating system for the past
~ 8 years I can say I love using it almost as much as I love driving and
working on my Scirocco!

It's so much easier to accomplish some tasks. Like, lets say you want to
move all the files starting with the letter J in a directory /files that
are newer (time-stamp wise) than "olsen-twins.jpg" to a new directory
/new-files. All you have to do is:

cd /files
mv `find . -cnewer olsen-twins.jpg -type f -printf \%f\\n | grep ^J` /new-files

In Windows, you would have to right click on each file starting with J,
check the properties to see when it was created, click and drag it in to
a new window, etc. It would take forever if you had 4000 files.

And, if you decided that wanted to move all directories starting with J
and newer than olsen-twins.jpg instead, you could just change "-type f" to
"-type d".

To quote AOL: "It's so easy, no wonder it's #1!"

Plus, you can do neat tricks to impress strangers, like:

echo j#A3f##f | tr fA#j3 oicSr

> totally relate to the command line driven interface. However, I keep mixing
> in the old keystrokes and it fouls me up all the time. :^) Now, if I could
> just partition my harddrive for Linux without fear of losing everything. lol

Hah, losing everything is a great way to start over ! :)

That's how I finally ditched DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1 and made the full switch
to Linux. My hard drive blew up and I couldn't find my install disks so I
just put Slackware on a big partition and kept an empty partition aside to
install DOS on. I never really felt the need to, so I eventually just
converted it to a secondary Linux partition :)

But seriously... it's not all secret service command line stuff. There are
some really nice interfaces and applications for X-Windows that beat the
crap out of Microsoft's offerings. The hard part is just setting them up.

My philosophy on it though is that Linux boxes are like Sciroccos. They're
an elite group, more or less. If everyone was using Linux, it would be the
Honda of the operating system world.

And just like the Scirocco, Linux has its weak spots. In my opinion they
are installation and gaming, two things I don't care about too much.
Video, mp3s, word processing, web browsing, cd burning, dvd playing,
graphics work, Windows emulation, etc all works flawlessly on my machine.

As far as where to learn it? I don't know.. buy a book or find a dedicated
friend with a lot of free time. Everyone I've tried to teach Linux to has
given up. Except for my Mom, she uses PINE to read her e-mail :)

Okay, enough yackin'..

-Toby