From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 21 12:01:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA21883 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 12:01:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from send1a.yahoomail.com (send1a.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.22]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id MAA21875 for ; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 12:01:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from osiris2002@yahoo.com) Message-ID: <19971221200129.5070.rocketmail@send1a.yahoomail.com> Received: from [194.79.98.68] by send1a; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 12:01:29 PST Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 12:01:29 -0800 (PST) From: Charlie Roots Subject: My Story With Unix To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk My Story With Unix ------------------ DISCLAIMER: ----------- I hereby disclaim any resposibility for any damage to your system caused by following or applying the contents of this document, this document is considered as a personal experience of the author, and by no means should the document be considered a guideline or a professional help in unix, internet or anything else, read and implement at your own risk. The author should never be held responsible for any errors found in this document or for any consequences that may happen to anyone by applying, interpreting or misinterpreting this document. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Document Header: _______________________________________________________________________________________ Author: Charlie Roots. Age: 34 yrs. Email: osiris2002@yahoo.com Last modified: 1997-DEC, 21 Status: Persons, Events & Dates in this story are REAL. Version: 0.0.1 Category: Long Essay Header Style: Verbose Spell checker: None Key words: Computing, Internet, Essay, Autobiography, Unix, Networks Operating Systems, System Administration, Story, Charlie Roots. News groups: sci.*, comp.*, society.* Serial no.: 1997.11.25.001.MSWU (for document reference) Chapters: 12 Format: US-ascii Expected Responses: Flames, hate-mail, fan-mail, usenet, E-mail(s). Jargon: +5 (assuming 10 degrees scale) Readability: +16 yrs. (assuming good IQ) Rating: Child and Family-friendly. Editor: Unix Cockpit Built-in Editor. Display: Formatted on 80 characters-wide display. Copyright Status: None, just don't claim you wrote it. Dedication: To THE INTERNET COMMUNITY. Purpose: Helping people going form DOS to UNIX, Education, Sharing Experinces, Autobiography. Published Via: Network News. Handling: Distribute Freely. Size: 36 KB N0. of Lines: 605 _______________________________________________________________________________________ I- Chapter One: Its Never Too Late. ----------------------------------------------- I-1. Introduction: ------------------ Starting my first internet connection was my real start of learning new things that I could not find in books, libraries, school, university, or even on the streets. My story with Unix operating system started from the net, and to the net I must give back, credit, help, and this story. I was the first among my friends to start the ultimate step in having a connection with the net, not so long ago, me and one of my friends got a trial account in one of the commercial services in the US, and man was that great fun. We started then in 1993 to feel the thrill of being online, with places and people physically so far away from us, located at the other end of the world, and we began enjoying the feeling of installing a newly downloaded file, and how sometimes the experience is a pleasure, and how other times its pure pain. When you are downloading a 5 MB zip at 2400 kbps, you really get a pain in the neck, and may be in other places too, but most surprisingly, we often did that, and waited and waited ages for the file to come, praynig that the DAEMONS don't curse that file on its way to our pieceful corner of the world, and praying that the, not so remote, possibility of a power failure, or a system CRASH, would have a permanent finger print on our head-hair. But to be honest with you, the NEW ERA, then, of being online was un-beatably forcing us on daily basis, to hook up the phone line over 5 hours, with GIGA phone bills in the end, and being online became a real obsession. The kind of services available these days were kind of simple, I mean no fancy GUI interface, just plain old BBS style text menus, that you select from by entering a character or a digit on your keyboard. But you know just like Shamoon and Bumpa told Simba, "slimy yet satisfying" [from the masterpiece Lion King]. I mean then we were in the dark ages, AOL has not been started yet, or was just gearing up, but the Masters of these days were compuserve. These guys really knew what they were doing. Few months later they even were, I think, the first online service to provide internet gateway. GENIE on the other hand was more geared up, not for the average user, but if you were a specialist in some kind of administrative, business, or even medical fields, you would surely select them as your service provider. Later, Genie introduced E-mail gateway to the internet, thus opening the window a little more for its people to have a look, even remotely, over the BEAST. The most amazing thing is that all today's top ranking services on the net had their equivalents in these dark ages, MUDs for example, were there. You download a piece of software to you local machine, and then install it, run it, and Hoopla , you connect to the server, and TRY to play in a multiplayer atmosphere, with players, physically separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, (1 mile = 1.6 Km I think). The real problem then was the ugly bandwidth, if you were caught red-handed with a modem faster than 9600, you may have been assasinated by envious eyes, but not that only, these old fashioned now services, would NOT connect you with speeds higher than 9600, they even dedicated special dialup lines with different phone numbers than the rest of the 'VOLKS', and charged these FAT CATS at higher rates. Sometime later, some genius started a GUI front end for that BBS style menu system, and man it worked, with some glitches though, but it was great fun. The things we were downloading these days were mostly MICROSOFTies, like windows 3.1 utilities, VB 3.0 VBXes, which helped me alot in a Project under Visual Basic, called The Nutrition Assist that I was doing for commercial use. So the fun was more than ever with introduction of the GUI, later on all online services introduced thier own GUIs and everyone was happy. I am not an expert in the internet, and I can't tell you at that time what was the internet bussy doing, but it was there and every single service online, was introducing different kinds of internet gateways, some full access like compuserve, and later on the GIANT AOL which started as a GIANT baby or a BABY giant, some like GEnie started putting up survays on their network for their users to tell them is it TIME-MONEY worth it to get a full access service or they prefer to stick with the email gateway only. Apparently our Free trial account had expired before we know the results of this survay, but even though, I can tell you with confidence that it was a big YES to the full access. I-2. Something Went Right: ------------------------------ We were back in our cell, with no window on the modern world. Then we realized that something was wrong, but the fact was we were cut off. Each of me and my friend went to our business, I went to my Master Degree, not in computers, and he to his job. We were hooked then with Micorosoft, that was really taking us slowly, but surely, forwards. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups was just released, and we were introduced to few trivial now, concepts of networking, workgroups, postoffices, etc. The good thing is when Microsoft Office 6.0 was released, me and my friend were gathered again for the digging into the new suite, and we discoverd some very interesting tricks, and we did a nice job on office applications, and I learned Microsoft Word at the same time that I was writing my Master Degree essay, being one of the MILLION users that shifted from Word Perfect to Word when word 6.0 was released. Now the fun was back again, with great difference though. One day I was entering my friends' office and here he was customizing the colors of word in 256 color mode, selecting certain blue color instead of the ugly grey, and yes we were flying again in adventure. The integration of the MS apps was good, I grabbed some DDE code from here and there, understood what was all that about, and bingo, implement in my NOW GIANT project, Nutrition Assist. It was great, I mean programming it was great, I would never give that openion of a project I personally wrote myself. The project implemented DDE within its basic file operations, Connected to its native MS Access database, and many other features, and the customers really liked it. On my way of learning, I some times open some old books in my library that were never read before, although I bought some years ago, and may not have had the time or the brains to read. One of these OLD GOLDIES was a really old book, The Design Of Unix operating System. I was never before a Unix guy, but the story of buying that specific book deserves mentioning. One day I was travelling by train, and enjoyed one little nap, of these I dore in trains, and the moment I woke up and openend my eyes, there was a man passing by me, and there it was in his hand, I rapidly grabbed the name from an attractive looking white cover, with blue text, and I don't know why I felt that this book will play some role in my life. Then I decided to buy it, and I did. But it remained for years over that shelf, covered up with dust, as was my brain I think. To tell you the truth, the circumstances were against this kind of adventure. First of all I am a practical guy, how would I read, understand, and implement something I am supposed to learn by reading an operating system design book, with out practicing it on a unix machine, how would I get a unix on a pc, in these days. So what I really needed is a power machine with a power commercial unix, but frankly this is way too far from my financial bandwidth. In the following years, we have witnessed a MAJOR advancement in high tech. and we have watched some numbers fly like this; [modem speed] 2400 --> 9600 --> 14400 --> 28800 --> 33600 --> ?? [cpu power] XT --> 286 AT --> 386-33 --> 386-40 amd --> 486 --> 486x2 --> 486x4 --> P5-75 --> 90 --> 133 --> 166 --> 200 --> P6-200 --> ???? while our brains kept flying like this ; [ram] 4 --> 8 --> 16 --> 32 --> 64 --> 128 --> ??? and our attic grew wider like this; [hd] 10 --> 40 --> 100 --> 170 --> 250 --> 300 --> 500 --> 1 GB --> 2 GB --> 3 --> 4 --> ? That was the right thing that happened, old hardware was the real handicap. My friend started few months earlier, not so long ago by the way, with an XT, I followed few months later ,in early summer 1990 with an AT-286, no HD, 512 kb mem, CGA video card, and no mouse. PERIOD. How do you achive an ambition on systems like this, how would you run unix on this junk. But good old DOS ,3.3 then, helped us figuring out what was the iron-maden things called COMPUTERS. When I look back in the past few years, I know now that this stage was needed to let us know how to resttle an angry machine, or install a software way below its minimum hardware requirements, these years made us a little bit more robust, and helped to emphasize one concept,that is, things won't just always be favourable, in fact they may never be, yet we have to fight our way though the misty way to reach our final destination. A lesson in life that these manifactuerers taught us with out intention. When the things became ok in hardware, the greedy software just asked for more, and when windows 95 was released a hardware upgrade was inevitable. In fact MS did us a favour by obligating us to get rid of our old rusty 386 and 486 junk before its too late. By doing so we now have power machines at home standby to really do some beasty stuff when needed. A special thanks here would go to PC MAGAZINE for excellent reviews, and guidance. I-3. The Ultimate Connection: -------------------------------- All that time our previous experience with online services has always been in our minds and the thrill was deeply missed. 1996 was the GOLDEN YEAR, we simply did it finally, and had the ultimate connection with the internet. Few months earlier, we baught a satellite receiver system at home, and as a NEWS LOVER, I watched CNN and NBC all the time, and there it was, as expected to be, a milestone of modern civilization, TV programmes about the net, or TV audiance sharing in programmes from all over the world by E-mail LIVE, the temptations and the propaganda were really at thier highest, I just could not resist anymore. Being aware of the implications, economical and social I decided to put one thing in my consideration, I will get connected, if it was the last thing I do. When anyone gets an internet connection, usually nothing in his life would all of you say will change, but to me it created a MAJOR attraction and successfully distracted me away from anything else, and I mean anything, I am an internet addict. I feel that I can't live a day without emailing, usenetting, downloading, browsing (I hate the word surfing as it implies a superficial attitude in the way of seeing things, right, otherwise you would really be DIVING). II- Chapter Two: Please Help. ------------------------------------ II-1. Kissing Windows Goodbye: -------------------------------- When I first got my password ,(I wont tell it though, but it may help you crack it if I tell you its 8 characters), form my ISP I knew nothing about the net, in essence, I have heard alot, saw alot about it, but never experienced it. The IP, DNS, and other native internet terms were really new to me, remember I am an amateur, learning a little bit by a litle bit as needed, so it took me a couple of days to understand how that stuff really worked, windows 95 helped alot making it an easy job to connect with out brain storming, especially for the newbie that came alive again. As I told you before, I like learning on my own like many of you, and I usually buy a couple of books, to take me by hand from the crawling stage to the UP and RUNNING stage. I asked my ISP for a tip, and he was a real gentleman, he recommended what will be one of the most resourceful and nicely written books I have ever read. Internet Secrets by Jhon R. Levine & Carl Baroudi and many other authors, published by IDG Books, and INFOWORLD in 1994, here's some words from the back cover, and they are FOR REAL. NB: I am not advertizing the book here, I am not connected to these authors, or publishers. "Here's your key to becoming a power internet user, Internet Secrets is powered with expert tips from the hottest inet authors....." The book covers litterally every thing to get you started whatever your platfrom and whatever you operating system, tips for windows, mac, unix, and os2. Pointers to client software you will need to be a power user, and pointers to server software and documentation that you may need to start serving yourself for the net, and may one day become an ISP yourself. The book gradually transfers you from the NEWBIE state to the NEWBIE GURU state, with no pain, at least you nowk know where your steps are going, and whose neck is under your feet (most probably yours !!). The book says it is targeted for intermediate to advanced users, but if your IQ is ok you will find over 90 % of the book is easy to digest. After digging for some time in the 980 pages book, I can now see things much better, and interact with inet much more efficiently, grabbing every now and then some of the software pointed at in the book, be warned that some pointers may change, for example a file with the name ircd-104.zip may now have become ircd105.arj or something more or less close to the name pointed at, but mostly the file is on the server, may be in another directory or another compression format, don't worry, if you can't find it do a search on it, if it is still manufactured, and or supported by the author/vendor/programmer you will find it. I also found a lot of user/administrator information on unix in this masterpiece. One of the first things that I downloaded over the net was Netscape Navigator, it is a piece of fine art software that will make your life as a user a lot more fun and easy. All the time I was browsing over the net the 4-charaters word ending with x kept popping up from everywhere, soon enough I discovered that internet is backboned by 'unix' and so inside out. I got curious more than ever due to the following; (PRIORITY ORDERED) 1. Now I have better hardware (makes you confident of the ability to get what you want) 2. I heard rumers of pc-oriented unix (don't forget that unix was never a pc OS when invented) 3. I heared rumers of a Free unix (don't forget that commerical versions really cost) 4. I heared that it is on the NET (remember that I like downloads ?) 5. I needed a new adventure in hands. (Don't we all ?) 6. Windows 95 seemed a little challenge, and I got fed up with the [CLOSE] [IGNORE] trap which actually ignores your clicks on the [IGNORE] button, and Closes the system into a system crash when you click [CLOSE] button, or when you don't. (once you are there, you are OUT). finally the white-covered (train) book came to surface again. II-2. The Hunt: ----------------- One lucky evening while the hungry LION is searching for the DEAR, I entered the following in YAHOO search, "Free Unix", and I end up with a list of hits on the word Free, and hits on the word Unix, after a few clicks, I got the strangely written word, FreeBSD. As a Microsoftian I have never heard about the three magic letters BSD before in my life, yet, Free, was serious enough to encourage a mouse click in that direction. What actually went that evening is that I have just put my hands on a link that will change many things, and will make other things never to look like they were before. What really happened is that I found my MEAL, the long lost+found one. Starting at http://www.freebsd.org was easy enough to find my way to ftp://ftp.freebsd.org and I found myself downloading, and downloading forever, hundreds of small files about 250,000 KB each from different directories, and although the download was long, the Idea of me getting a unix on my machine was stunning, although no confirmation that this software will run or even install on my machine was available. As a completely new thing, I broke one of my habbits with software, which is, dig in and find everything a little bit at a time yourself, and by trial and error, then consult documentation only when you are really stuck, or if you want extra features later. Although many of you may consider it a bad habit, but I like doing things the hard-way most of the time, I find pleasure in understanding the stuff on my own without the documentation baby-sitting me, and most of the time this technique works for me. But I do not recommend it for anyone except the really adventurous, because what you may find by resttling with the software for few hours, days, weeks, you may find in the first few lines of documentation, then you'll know what a real GOOFY you were. Understanding that I am getting ready to learn Chinese for the first time, I decided to act as polite as the first grade pupil, yet they do not come so polite these days anymore. I started reading some documentation, some *.txt and *.html and here it was a confirmation that this OS will behave good on my machine, and I was relieved. II-3. The Dark Room: ---------------------- For an absolute newbie in UNIX, I was watching very well where my steps are going, and avoided skipping sections in docs, my habit, or being hassled by the desire to get up and running quickly, I took some time to understand how in the world am I supposed to install on a single hard disk, that already contained data, which were not expendible in any way, and I can't afford to loose Un-backed few years' work. [NO MONEY MAN.. NO MONEY, aka, NO HONEY.] The docs repeatedly insisted on BAKCUP EVERYTHING before procedding, but actually I was not ready for 2.1 GB backup then, since I had no CDROM then, or a BACKUP DRIVE. I just kept my eyes open, walking carefully enough to avoid unrecoverable disaster. A note here worths menioning, that I became so close to the point of disaster on several occasions, and this technique is potentially very harmful. The first real magic piece of software was a tiny utility called fips.exe which helped me to section my exsisting hard disk into 2 separate partitions without hurting the exsisting data, then I was ready for the installation. The installation was fairly a straight forewards one, with the exception of that part the asks for the hard disk geometry, which if given wrong will yield the installation un-usable, I did it wrong 3 times, and re-installed the entire system 3 times until I found out what was wrong, and gave it the right numbers, and BINGO, we were on the right direction. From reading the FAQs I found out that this particular problem was giving many people a hard time, and I am not alone, this really helped since I started to feel for a moment that I did not have the minimum IQ figure for running or even installing unix, and I should keep on bieng a Miscrosoftian. Once this UGLY problem was solved, the rest of setup is kind of interesting, because it reminded me with good old DOS programs the enter low resolution graphics mode, and give you a false GUI look and feel. This gave me some confidence that I am not entering another galaxy, in fact, we are still home. Once the installation was done, and I rebooted into the FreeBSD, I mean Unix partition, I felt like someone has closed my eyes, or like I have entered a DARK ROOM. Suddenly the Power user I used to be has vanished into thin air, and I found my self completely disoriented, and lost. I could not see Floppy Dirves, Printer, the other partition, even the files or directories, I did not know even how to reboot the system safely, in fact I was COMPLETELY BLIND. II-3. Dilating The IRIS: -------------------------- I decided to QUIT unix for some time and get serious help, I payed my ISP a visit, to pay the monthly fees, and gently asked for another tip. The man was an angel, and he liked my attitude of digging into something like this on my own, so he most generously gave me the only copy he's got of his own DEC-OSF1 system manual , that was really driving our network, with strong confirmations from my side the it will be a very short borrow, and I'll take very good care of it. I went home, and started eating the papers of that manual, and took a few notes, I now know how to ls to dir, and how to pwd to cd. Simple commands frequently short-hand style, but gives you what you want. Two days later, I gave the man his manual with all the required thanks, and apreciation. I started practicing the new commands, but now I know it needed more than this to really see things the way they were. I decided to grab some html education on the net, and here it was lying for the hungry, and I downloaded a lot of very helpfull docs over the net, and did some home work, suddenly my eyes were opened, and the IRIS has dilated. To Microsoftians, Unix is kind of strange, when you boot DOS-WINDOZ systems, you never worry about the basic system components being detected or not, because unless you do some rational stuff, the OS will most probably identify, you computer's components, and even things like CDROMS, printers, scanners, sound cards, are easily installed, as they come with disks labelled as DOS-DRIVERS, WINDOWS3.1 DRIVERS, WIN 95 DRIVERS, and WINDOWS NT DRIVERS. In Unix, especially these Net-Distributed Types, there's nothing labelled UNIX DRIVERS, and even your floppy drives will be in NON-OPERATIONAL mode when you boot a freshly installed system, this will definitely confuse previous Micrsoftians like me, and you may sometimes think that unix is stupid, because you can't even access a simple floppy, despite the system identified it at boot time and gave you a clear message that the harware was found and identified in a most verbose manner, a way you are not used to, giving the type, vendor name, irqs and everything about the hardware device, things you even never knew before although the same device was sitting for years in your room. It took me sometime to find out that UNIX mounts this kind of devices, using the mount command, and you have to read the manual page for mount to get the exact command correct, then you are supposed to know how to invoke the manual page using the man command. Now I figured out the spirit of unix, small pieces here and there to get a monster, just like a building formed of small bricks, the entire system is linked together. The amazing thing that I found later, is that you don't have to manually remount every single media device you have everytime you boot, but instead there is a file called fstab in the /etc directory that can do that job for you every boot. The implications of this simple finding were so great and un-believable. So unix is a completely automated system, and can do much much more than just automating the process of mounting media at boot time, infact an advanced user on unix can let the system run and administer itself for quite a long time with out baby-sitting, and with utmost efficiency. The second most amazing thing is that unix can mount entire drives as READ-ONLY or READ-WRITE as required, and it shows you the mounted partitions as ordinary directories, a thing WIN-DOS users find most strange. Another very serious implication of the /etc/fstab, was that I then knew that I could damage the system, or put in un-bootable, or un-usable state, not with a single line and not with a single word, but with only one very wrong character, in the very wrong position or the very wrong file will do the system, aka, make its REAL day, a final very bezzare implication of this was that the whole system is maintained and configured via plain TEXT files, and you can edit any and change any, even with the system running, without any complaints by the system, that this file is in use or being locked. Later on, I discovered that the Freely available Unix types come with the FULL source code for the entire system, and if you have the knowledge to do so, you can modify the system itself, or even make a new unix out of it, even the KERNEL, that actually boots the DEAD METAL into an intelligent operating system, is available as a bunch of files, that you will for sure one day edit and recompile the kernel to identify new hardware, or other hardware not enabled by default kernel. The great thing is that unix is a very robust system, and does not break easily, its just you may not have the enough knowledge or tools needed to recover from a real disaster, or even a small glitch, so if get stuck, ask an expert before doing a re-install especially if you have unsaved data that you will loses if you choose to re-install. I kept the unix system free of DATA for over six months, and all I had on the Unix partition was the unix programs that I've already saved in compressed format on the DOS partition, but this has changed after I had more knowledge of the system, and now being stable for over another six months, with all kinds of data safely sitting. This has further changed since I got my new CDROM, and backing up all data and compressed files on CDROMs with the help of a friend having a re-writable CD. II-4. Confused ? Have Some More: ---------------------------------- You will stay in a state of confusion for sometime when you make your BIG MOVE from WIN-DOS to Unix, and you will find many things completely new to you. /dev for example was one of the first things that attracted my attention as a unix newbie, the strange thing is that this particular directory contains a lot of files that are ZERO BYTE, ie empty in MS world and can safely be deleted. But, if you do that most probably you will live to regret it. These zero byte files are NOT files, and they are NOT directories too, they are DEVICE SPECIAL FILES, that the system uses to deal with I/O from and to all system devices, for example, tty, cuaa, are serial devices, and without these, no mouse, no modem, no dial in, no dial out, more side effects, and programs complaining, and system crashing, etc. The concept of manually removing a file that seems un-important should be abandond in unix world, which many of us previous Microsoftians heavily implemented in DOS world as many stupid, or intelligent, programs leave uncleaned swap and temp files, and since we try to be clean all the time, we are used to del *.*, FORGET THIS command if you ever want to live piecefully with your new neighbour. More confusion comes from the unix deals with partitions and harddisks. In a typical unix installation, the system creates BASIC FOUR partitions; / root partition /usr usr partition /var var partition swap swap partition / , /usr, and /var appear as ordinary directories, but if you really want to see some action issue the df command and see what is really going on at boot time, you will find many of the strange looking things in /dev mount as partitions, and the partitions looking like ordinary directories, and if you want more confusion issue the following command, and read, man ccd. ccd is the concatenated disk driver, that can make more than one partition or more than one disk to appear as a single partition, which also will look infact like any other directory on the system. What power these geniuses have provided in unix, and what a waste of time dealing with WIN-DOS for the past seven years. II-5. Piping, Echoing, Moring amd More Similarities: ------------------------------------------------------ >From time to time you will encounter a similarity in name and function between unix and WIN-DOS programs and concepts. The truth is that most of these things originated in the unix world far back in history before DOS even existed, and this helps the newcommer to feel less strange in the new world. Unix counterparts are by definition more robust, more secure, more efficient, faster, and more powerful than their dos siblings. In fact since the original unix developed in the late 1960s, it was made of small utilities that combined together produced a robust and powerful system, this should not be over-emphasized here, just take a look at any unix shell script and try to do some man page study, to understand the script, and you will get the picture. II-6. Inside your Egg Shell: ------------------------------ Shells unix shells available similarities with dos concept of shell III- GMC, HONDA, FERRARI, ROYCE, and BENZ, lets all make one car: -------------------------------------------------------------------- III-1. Satisfaction or Your Money BACK: ---------------------------------------- One of the first things that strike you when you get into the unix world is the absolute diversity of the flavours that is called unix. Many vendors, both commercial and non-profit do nothing in life but produce these beasts. And you start wondering what is that behind all this, why not simply uniting in some conference or convetion and put a standard once and for all. But by saying this you have really done two things, and may be more. first, you forgot that even DOS came initially from different vendors, remember IBM-DOS (PC-DOS), DR-DOS, MS-DOS, and even Norton tried once to put his NDOS. Second, this will be exactly as if you say, GMC, HONDA, FERRARI, ROYCE, and BENZ, lets all make one car. But this by all means is impossible, since each vendor is making his own car or OS and making money from being different than the others in a way or another and the user or the consumer loves and gets hooked on one of these, and it is very difficult to make him shift. Its PURE MONEY that is driving different vendors to implement things in different ways, that is from his openion better than the rest, otherwise he will be stupid not to implement as the others did. Even a newbie like me finds it an annoying idea to shift from FreeBSD to Linux, and other peolple on the linux side see it as a bad idea to shift to FreeBSD. This is true even more within the commercial world, as an ISP is really hooked on his vendor to supply patches and upgrades, for more than one reason, trust, security, discounts, you name it. Another factor is many of the commercial vendors, especially SUN Microsystems, HP and Digital Equipements Corp., tailor their unix implementation to specific HARDAWARE that they produce, and simply won't run at ease on other platforms of hardware. III-2. DO I Have BBS Brakes in MY CAR: --------------------------------------- Missing files, and programs in some systems Dependancies make compilation fail, or programs crippled, or bad looking III-3. Lets Get Married: ------------------------- Inter-OS support FreeBSD compatibiity layer with linux -very good user/devel FreeBSD Compatibility Layer with DOS -emu 8088 FreeBSD Compatibility Layer with Windows 3.1 , 95 -wine Unix running under WIN-DOS from the original vendors AT&T -uwin IV- Peter Sellers in After The Fox: --------------------------------------- Unix Security. COPS SATAN TCP_Wrappers Firewalls Passwords <------------------------weakest point Password Crackers Brute Force Attacks File and Directory Access Mode BigBrother Cryptography Trojan Horses, Viruses, Worms, (and Fungus) V- Peter Sellers in The Party: ----------------------------------- Little Indian / Big Indian Unix is a developer Platform. Compiling Source Code For the system Compiling Source Code for the applications and Daemons. VI- Make Sure you Learn JAVA : --------------------------------- VI-1. Cross platform languages for universal projects: -------------------------------------------------------- One of the most successful language of the late 90s and the future to come is JAVA. I figured this out when I ported my HTML docs from Windows 95 World to Unix World, and I want to tell you that the code that was written in JAVA worked exactly the same on both sides right out of the box, with no modifications what so ever. If you are seriuos about the Internet and the future, make sure you learn java. Another extremely efficient and powerful language is perl, which can run seemlessly in both worlds. If you are a real GUI fan have a very close look at TCL/TK package which will shock you with the quality, speed, and beauty of applications developed with it. VII- The Daemons Curse, and The Curses: ------------------------------------------ Servers on typical unix More Servers From inet Unix Libraries Where are Unix DLLs -------> loadable kernel modules, and shared libraries VIII- DOOM, BOOM, and All That JAZZ: -------------------------------------- Games for unix Simple yet intelligent (Fortune) Advanced , Multimedia, joystick, Mouse, X-window Games (Doom, Quake) MUDs IX- Multiuser, MuliTasking by Default: ------------------------------------------ ps w who talk irc login: X- The X-Window: --------------------- The Concept of a Window Manager What Window Managers Are There The KDE is The BEST Grabbing Motif Connecting over X-window Font Server Xdm and Xwindow security XI- Databases: ------------------ XII- Applications Make you Productive - GRAB THESE: ------------------------------------------------------ The BEST unix application by category - that compile nicely on FreeBSD Pointers to their location on the net ports/packages collection RedHat Linux RPM Applications Won't compile on FreeBSD and are needed. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Table Of Contents: ------------------ I- Chapter One: Its Never Too Late 1. Introduction 2. Something Went Right 3. The Ultimate Connection II- Chapter Two: Please Help 1. Kissing Windows Goodbye 2. The Hunt 3. The Dark Room 4. Confused ? Have Some More 5. Piping, Echoing, Moring amd More Similarities 6. Inside your Egg Shell III- GMC, HONDA, FERRARI, ROYCE, and BENZ, lets all make one car 1. Satisfaction or Your Money BACK 2. DO I Have BBS Brakes in MY CAR 3. Lets Get Married IV- Peter Sellers in After The Fox V- Peter Sellers in The Party VI- Make Sure you Learn JAVA 1. Cross platform languages for universal projects VII- The Daemons Curse, and The Curses VIII- DOOM, BOOM, and All That JAZZ IX- Multiuser, MuliTasking by Default X- The X-Window XI- Databases XII- Applications Make you Productive - GRAB THESE _______________________________________________________________________________________ Index Of Copyrights, and Trademarks: ------------------------------------- MS: Microsoft Inc. IBM: International Business Machines ZD: Ziff Davis Pentium: Intel AMD: DOS, Windows 3.1, 3.11 WFW, 95, NT: MS AIX: IBM DEC: Digital Equipment Corp. Unix AT&T PC MAGAZINE ZD CNN: Cable News Network NBC: YAHOO: Microsoftians: An Alien Race that started to appear sometime between DOS-3.1 and Windows-3.1 D.C. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL NOTE: If you like this doc, if you hate it, send me mail, and say hello. Any criticism, comments, corrections, and advice are most welcome, and try to be nice. == MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com