Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther 284
| Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther | |
| author | Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson |
| pages | 168 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Publishing |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Kevin Spencer |
| ISBN | 0596006179 |
| summary | Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther is a good tool for those who are generally comfortable with the original Mac OS or Mac OS X, but not the Unix command line. Most of the content would not interest the traditional programmer, Linux, BSD, or other UNIX jockey, however. The Finder can't do it all, and it's a good idea to realize that today's Mac OS has more ways to force it to work than its original version. This 3rd edition of the book has a better audience focus than previous editions. |
This book focuses on those of us in the Mac OS professional world who have become Unix system admins by default with the introduction of OS X, and could stand to have a handy UNIX reference nearby, particularly if the Finder freezes in Apple's latest version of their BSD/OpenStep blend of a UNIX operating system.
As the authors explain in the book, the best justification for understanding and using the UNIX components present is Mac OS X is the same as in any other UNIX-family operating system: power and control. The Finder (Mac OS X's graphical desktop manager) can't do everything, so this book provides information to help power users and technicians resolve issues, install software, or create an optimized experience, all through the Terminal.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide a very helpful tutorial on the Mac OS X Terminal application, from showing the benefits of customizing the Terminal, the concept of shells, UNIX command syntax, and other obscure but useful settings that strengthen the power of the application when accessing the BSD innards of Mac OS X. Arguably, these two chapters are the strongest guide on Mac OS X's Terminal application (as it relates to its UNIX roots) that I have seen in any Mac OS X book to date.
Chapters 3 and 4 handle understanding of the UNIX filesystem, administration and superuser access, privileges, handling external volumes, file and directory names and the like. Mac OS X, while a BSD at heart, doesn't map out everything in a traditional UNIX-style directory format--at least, not from the Finder's view. Through the Terminal, a user can see the underlying, otherwise-hidden UNIX directories. The authors go through some basic but very helpful situations such as changing file and owner permissions, which can be changed from the Finder with greater ease in Panther, but not with the same finesse as done from a command line.
The file management chapter moves readers through the classic commands for moving, editing, and copying files from the command line, which can be very helpful for administrators of Mac OS X systems who must attempt repairs by SSH, for instance, and don't have access to the usual graphical elements that generally make Mac OS usage so easy. The authors don't pick sides in the vi vs. pico debate, and just offer the basic instructions on how to use either for your editing.
The book continues with the same level of complexity that local system admins or power users require in issues such as printing via CUPS, handling processes that the Finder doesn't show, using the X11 application, using Fink (a Debian-style installation application) installing OpenOffice and GIMP, using FTP and secure shell, using Pine and Lynx, and more.
For a book of just 168 pages, the authors pack quite a bit on making a Mac OS X system work from its Terminal roots. New Mac OS X system administrators will find this book most useful, particularly if their UNIX experience is lacking or radically different from what Mac OS X presents. Experienced *NIX users who bought a new Mac may find the book a good intermediary to demonstrate how Mac OS X Panther differs from the *NIX boxen they've used in the past.
You can purchase Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:Apple already provides an excellent tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:+5 insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple already provides an excellent tool (Score:3, Insightful)
One could use the apropos command for a start.
Re:"vi vs pico" debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, I'm a pico user but I'm not a zealot over it. I use pico when I want to do some simple, quick editing in the command-line environment. For anything more complex I use BBEdit [barebones.com], which does pretty much everything that vi or emacs does except with a nice GUI.
But hey, use whatever works for you. Vi is certainly powerful enough. I just can't be bothered to take the time to learn all the commands, vi has a pretty high learning curve.
Re:very useful (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:very useful (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, the terminal is just another tool on your system. Just because someone works mainly with a GUI doesn't mean that they are not able to comprehend the command-line. Yes, the first couple of times that someone uses the command-line they are going to make some dumb mistakes but if they have a decent guide then those mistakes can be kept to a minimum and have minimal negative impact.
You might as well say that it's not worth if for a person who has never programmed to learn BASIC or C. If they don't take the first steps then how do they learn in the first place? If you are going to do anything on a computer you have to start somewhere, no matter if you are used to a GUI or not.
Re:very useful (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSD Command Line (Score:2, Insightful)
Essentially, anyone that uses MAC OS X (if they don't already) will see the power of BSD and UNIX and general.. and will maybe move their PCs (unless they have MAC only) from Windows to a variation of UNIX, such as BSD or Linux.
Re:what about Mac OS for *nix geeks? (Score:1, Insightful)
therefore still using linux on my ibook...
Re:Info on vi and pico..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:very useful (Score:4, Insightful)
That statement would ensure the death of the command line wouldn't it? I don't see many schools these days offering anything but Windows and Macs for students to learn on.
Re:very useful (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't own one because I want to join some elitist club of "creative professionals", I don't own a Mac because I think that it's somehow screwing Microsoft, I don't own a Mac because it has a candy-coated GUI, I own it because it has a solid and proven operating system derived from openstep and because it came properly set up for the hardware inside. Which for me is a prime consideration when buying a laptop.
Maybe the next laptop I buy will be x86 and Linux based again (this machine has had more than it's share of hardware failures) but OS X has always been rock solid for me, and the drivers and power management have always worked as they should, which is more than you can say for most x86 laptops even when running the OEM setup.
To me, it's just another Unix system on another flavour of hardware. Would you be telling me that I shouldn't be playing with the command line if I'd bought a SPARC laptop?
Re:Useful information, but to whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience I've seen two types of large Mac user communities
(1) Mac users who want a simple OS, that is easy to use. They are not computer savvy and just want to use their machine to get the job done
(2) Unix / Mac users who hated Microsoft Windows for being neither powerful/stable nor simple/elegant to use.
Many of the people in the category (2) probably gravitated towards OSX quickly when it came out. People in category (1) waited for all their essential applications to be ported, before being forced to upgrade.
-Diganta
Re:Mac users from way back (Score:4, Insightful)
Authors read /. too (Score:5, Insightful)
Curious about other writing I've done? There's some useful free info online at 404 error page [404-error-page.com], particularly for Apache admins, and another book that slashdotters will appreciate is my Wicked Cool Shell Scripts [intuitive.com]. And, yes, Virginia, the latter includes specific scripts for Mac OS X too.
Re:Here, for free (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is the sort of response that drives people actually looking to learn UNIX away.
I have been familiar with command line since it was typed out on paper.
However, to a newbie the manual page is no more intuitively decipherable than clicking on "Start" to shutdown is on Windows.
man pages are only of use to people who already know the command line. Others need it explained to them, and I have found it far more productive to provide them with that explanation than implying they're just too stupid to read the manual.
I see that my original post is now modded as flamebait for having this underlying point. If this one is also modded as flamebait I shall suffer that fate gladly in order to stick up for people who feel they need a good book and/or a bit hand holding to get them started and oppose the "RTFM" and "YTSTRTM" attitude.
KFG
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Finder (Score:1, Insightful)
I actually find it quite good. The only problem I have with 10.3 Terminal.app is that it is *slow*. Really slow. With my typical setup, 80x43 with antialiasing turned on, using console vim doesn't feel all that realtime anymore. I tried iTerm, but didn't like its behaviour. GLterm is out of question because "GLterm doesn't support Unicode nor non-roman scripts."
Re:Useful information, but to whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been using Mac OS since 7, and never really used anything else (natch...I've always been in design or print production). I had to plink around in some VERY basic UNIX commands for a general computer science class in college, so I know some basic navigation and a few commands.
I have no interest in running anything but a Mac system, even just for fun, because I don't find the thought of not knowing how to do anything fun. But I'm not so stupid as to think that I can do everything I need to do in Mac OS. I've read enough tips and cool hacks and neat ways to make things work by using Terminal, that I know it would behoove me to know something beyond to basics.
If they were so inclined, they'd already have some experience on another OS by now.
So, I say BS to this. I'm inclined to learn some rudimentary stuff, but no way in hell do I care to, no imagine I could be productive in, anything else. This book sounds perfect.
Re:very useful (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me guess... you've never fiddled around with some setting or file you probably shouldn't have, and wound up paying for it? Doubtful...
Re:The BSD Command Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Why would my parents, who only do application level stuff (web browsing, word processing, email, games), need to learn the "power of Unix"? They're non-technical end-users. They aren't concerned with harnessing the power of their machine, and nor should they have to be.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I have 644 items in
That's why there's a user level set of folders that aren't the standar UNIX convention.
Re:Transitioning from OS9 - XP or OSX? Easiest? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here, for free (Score:4, Insightful)
Even Einstein and Feynman found refering to a physics textbook and taking a course or two helpful.
The context here is reading a book, not your time. You don't have to post at all, let alone take the trouble to post that you aren't going to post helpfully.
People even find books helpful in letting them know that to shutdown you have to click on the "Start" button. Or course you find help in this matter by refering to the bundled documentation, but clicking on the "Start" button.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
KFG
don't be obtuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to avoid prejudice.
Renaissance people DO exist (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a deeper cultural thing going on here. On this site it's not uncommon to see programming-types bash (pardon the pun) users of more graphically-oriented tools (like Flash) with incredible zeal. It's as if there's some sort of Berlin Wall between creative and techinical people, and any attempt to bridge the two is doomed to failure or must be opposed.
This is nonsense.
This seperation of arts & humanities from the sciences is a relatively recent phenomonon. It's when people work with both sides of their brains that beautiful things really start to happen. Look at Leonardo Da Vinci if you want the best example. Look at the power of tools like Flash when you get people working on it to use its more powerful features like XML parsing with ActionScript, remoting, video etc. Look at musicians who can manipulate their creations electronically. Look at the animators who produce beautiful work on the big screen like Finding Nemo, Babylon 5 etc.
A lot of creative Mac people will benefit from having a deeper understanding of the way their command-line works, and if they're approaching it from a different angle than traditional Unix fans then so what? Isn't a fresh persective a good thing? Likewise I think that a lot of Unix fans could do well to visit more art galleries and explore their creative side a bit more. It may make better programmers out of them.
For the record, I work on both sides of the fence and do an equal amount of creative and technical work.
Re:Apple already provides an excellent tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Transitioning from OS9 - XP or OSX? Easiest? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I'd guess that these old Mac friends are largely complaining due to the fact that OS X is a pretty big change from OS 9, especially when compared to the relative differences in OS versions before that. A user familiar with System 7 (or probably even System 6) would have no problem jumping right into OS 9. Not much changed in the basic user interface. In comparison, a lot of these people are finding quite a few stumbling blocks in OS X, simply because things don't quite work the same. They're finding a lot of things unfamiliar (and often seeing this as complexity) as you say. Unfamiliarity is uncomfortable, and probably moreso for people like this than for technical people like us. I'd say part of the time this is because it's really different in a particular aspect, but part of the time it's really the same but superficially different (for example OS X calls some things different names, but they work about the same -- even this small change can be bewildering to certain users).
I'd be willing to bet that her old Mac friends would be complaining 10 times as much if they were using XP instead of OS X. I think that the transition from OS 9 to OS X is far and away easier than OS 9 to XP. Not that XP is all bad; the difference is just much, much greater. A Mac running OS X is still a Mac. It looks a little different and sometimes acts a little different, but it really isn't that much different once you get used to it. I can't think of any reason why a typical non-technical user would ever have to open Terminal or anything of that sort. There will be some frustration in any change like this, but I think far less than in going to XP. But that's just my opinion.