Learning UNIX for Mac OS X

Spencerian writes "I've become quite accustomed the depth of co-author Dave Taylor's writing on UNIX in previous books such as Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 Hours . As you can note from Dave's recent writing credits, his experience and knowledge of UNIX is vast and varied. That said, I was mildly disappointed with this latest offering that discusses the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X." Spencerian explains the logic underlying that conclusion in his complete review, below.

Learning UNIX for Mac OS X
author	Dave Taylor & Jerry Peek
pages	139
publisher	O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
rating	7.5
reviewer	Spencerian
ISBN	0596003420
summary	A good first-reference for new UNIX users, but steer clear if you're a UNIX vet.

For starters, I was annoyed to find that the book's title implied a larger format than the 139 pages it comprises. The book has an audience problem because of its size. UNIX guys like thick books. Is this book mostly for newbies to OS X, to UNIX, or to Mac OS X's implementation of UNIX? Despite this targeting problem, the book's contents are still useful, but I think its audience is more geared to new UNIX users. The book just doesn't have much depth for even a reference title, especially for a topic such as UNIX, and particularly for a new, little-documented UNIX family operating system such as OS X.

While Mac OS X is a BSD variant, it has a few idiosyncrasies that may throw off a veteran UNIX user, and this book manages to address most, if not all of these notable problems. For instance, Dave notes problems in sendmail that prevent it from working from the command line in Mac OS X's Terminal application, and presents a fix for the problem. If you use command lines in UNIX all the time, the book does present good instructions on getting Lynx, IRC, newsgroups, pine, and the like up and running in Terminal. The book shies away (quite appropriately) from any graphic interface items unless required, such as when changing Terminal's preferences.

This book was very recently published (May 2002) but already has fallen behind with the release of Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Some components of Jaguar, such as CUPS support for stronger printing options, are completely missing from this book. If you have Jaguar installed on your computer, don't dive headlong into the NetInfo Manager steps for LPR printer configuration. Books typically don't age this fast, but in the case of this book, small changes seem to mean a lot to this title's usefulness -- the introduction of CUPS may have made Chapter 5's contents almost irrelevant.

Another small nag involves the lack of information on useful commands for Mac OS X users that weren't available (or were difficult to find) with the old Mac OS 9. One such command, cron, makes my life easier for handling some tasks on my home computer. It's not even mentioned in this book, nor will you find much information on shell scripting or compiling UNIX code you might happen to find. I guess I'm most annoyed at the lack of compile information since the Apple Developer Connection marked this book as a Recommended Title.

Despite our fondness for (and tolerance of the slightly-higher prices of) Macintosh computers, Mac users aren't made of money and don't like to buy a bookstore's worth of tomes for basic information. It would have made a lot of sense to talk more about compiling software since Apple's software or other GUI products don't meet or can configure all UNIX needs. And I won't even talk about the lack of coverage about XDarwin, an application that starts XFree86 within a Mac OS X installation, allowing X Window applications to run atop or in tandem with the OS X interface. XDarwin has become popular enough for it to become part of the stable XFree86 distribution. Given that not every UNIX user is a command-line freak, this is a pretty critical omission in my mind.

So, who should buy this book?

If you are completely new to UNIX and have been a gooey-kiddie who's used almost nothing except Mac OS 9, this is a very good reference to get your toes moist with UNIX. However, as drug dealers say, "the first taste is free." This book will leave you wanting more detailed information. More experienced UNIX users can probably find out what they need about Mac OS X's command line from a few free locations such as Mac OS X Hints.

One last thing: A pox upon Tim O'Reilly for not using the platypus for the animal on the book's cover. Given that the open-source core operating system of Mac OS X is named Darwin and has a nicely-modified take-off on the BSD mascot that depicts both the name of the OS and its BSD origins, I would think that O'Reilly would have jumped on this obvious cover.

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You can purchase Learning UNIX for Mac OS X from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Its a shame its not 10.2

[Hunts]

I've been having major problems with OS X Server 10.2 thats driving me insane.

Thinking in a more unix way, I starting trying to hunt down the proccess involved..but all to no avail. I couldnt find any proccesses that seemed to be having problems..and was told by a friend in the know that my issue was more of a mac gui thing...something I know nothing about :/

A good decent book on OS X Server 10.2 would be really nice at the moment

Oh I don't know

[Drath]

UNIX guys like thick books

That's a misnomer, My Kernighan & Ritchie C book gets a lot of use and it's only ~280 pages. Large does not espessially mean better.

"Audience Problems"??

[vi-rocks]

The review stated:

The book has an audience problem because of its size. UNIX guys like thick books. Is this book mostly for newbies to OS X, to UNIX, or to Mac OS X's implementation of UNIX? Despite this targeting problem.....

This is crazy!!! There is no "targeting problem" -- the book is written for people who are new to UNIX -- that is the target audience. The book is right on for this crowd. As mentioned by others, there are other books that the UNIX savvy will find useful. -- Why would someone who owns "Unix PowerTools" or "Essential System Administration" even consider bying a book with "Learning Unix" in the title???

Re:UNIX guys like thick books--wrong

[Golias]

It sounds to me like the review was a result of misunderstanding. He was hoping for a "OS X UNIX for UNIX geeks" book, when it sounds to me like it's actually meant to be a "the basics of UNIX for OS X n00bs" book, which certainly has its place. A lot of MacOS 7-9 users are totally new to sed, awk, grep, cron, and the common UNIX directory layout. A simple UNIX primer from a good publisher like O'Reilly Press could be very handy for some of them.

taming unix

[goombah99]

It's like the chinese curse "my you live in interesting times". Mac OsX has given us a wonderful set of opportunities and pitfalls. Books are sorely needed, and needed quickly. Most of all are books that point out the pit falls of assuming linux and macOSX work the same way.

Apple gave us a lot of power but has not told us how to use it. In the mean time We are encouraged not to use them until they are documented, but being geeks we cant resist poking and prodding. And assuming that because we know linux or BSD that we know Mac OSX. Then we get MAD when we get into trouble from our uniformed meddling or we discover some bit of uglyness behind the veil that we dont like exactly how apple has implemented it. Whereas before we were bilssfully unaware and untempted. It seems like all the anti-apple slashdot critiques that are at leaset slightly based on experience are along the lines of "well linux doesn't do it that way, so apple is wrong."

When I first got OS X beta, I nievely tried to set /etc/fstab and /etc/exports. Got steamin mad. Then discovered netInfo. (I vaguely knew where to look from NeXTstep) Thought that was truly wonderful and sorely needed unification of unix configuration. Blessed apple. But apple had not issued the manual. No matter, I waded in, did some cool things, and by the end of the day my computer was unbootable from one leeetle mistake. (had to re-install). Cursed Apple for not documenting this. (I had called them on the phone and they warned me not to meddle with it!) But within 6 months the NetInfo manual was indeed out along with some idiot proof gui "training wheel" tools for making changes to certain records.

My experience with OSX has been extremely positive. I make some whopper mistakes, but that was really y fault. mac unix is unix but its not LINUX and HFS+ is NOT UFS. But that does not make it worse. In fact on the whole I think its much better. But if you assume that cp and mv do the same thing they do in linux, well you will eventually get a surprise.

Book Doesn't Make Compelling Case for LearningUnix

[CaptMondo]

I remember being really interested in this title when I first heard of it -- most of the Mac OS X books I've looked at don't really take a good hard look at the BSD Unix heart of the OS.

I ended up reviewing this book [canadacomputes.com] for The Computer Paper, and my editor summed it up with the title: "Unix book doesn't explain why Mac users should learn it".

Okay, I know it is aimed at the beginner, but aside from teaching the basics, none of it really goes into learning any of this would be useful to the reader. Why teach someone about using the lynx browser for example, and not show them how to use grep for finding files, or the basics of shell programming to automate common tasks.

Best book of its type that I've seen so far on this specific topic is Mac OS X Unleashed [canadacomputes.com]. For the beginner, I'd recommend Mac OS X: The Missing Manual [canadacomputes.com] which probably has about as much info on the Unix end of things while having plenty of good general useful info on OS X.