Thursday, January 31, 2013

How to install a Unix operating system while still having windows?

Q. I want to be able to go in between a windows and Unix operating system. What is the best way to do this?? Are there any really good examples on the web that could help me with this?

Thanks

A. Big Ubuntu fan here too. Unix rules. You don't HAVE to have another partition, if you don't want to mess with your Windows partition you can get another hard drive, like a little 160gb one for $40 should be plenty. then you can install Unix on that and dual-boot. Dual-booting is where you turn on the computer and it will give you a menu of which operating system you want to boot into. you can even set a default and a timer so if you haven't made a selection in 5, 10, 20 or so seconds it will automatically go to the default.

If you only want to play around a little bit with different versions before jumping in and doing surgery, look into LiveCD's. Many Linux/Unix versions have LiveCD versions now. A LiveCD is a CD disk with a work install of that OS on it, you just insert the CD and boot up the computer and if the computer is set to check the CD for bootable content it will pop up a menu saying "boot from CD without modifying hard drive?" and you hit enter and it will boot up that OS. Everything it does just runs in RAM so you can't save anything to the hard drive, but it lets you get a feel for the interface, surf the web if it was able to detect your internet connection, play some games etc... LiveCD's are a great tool too because you can make them get into your hard drive if you want, so if a virus has ruined your Windows installation and you want to get your important files out before formatting it, you can use a LiveCD to copy all your files to thumbdrive or to an internet server or email them to yourself etc... Ubuntu is my favorite version for computers built in the last 5 years. Computers older than that run better on Xubuntu, which is a scaled-down version of Ubuntu. In fact I'm on Xubuntu now on an old 700mhz computer.

for a little bit on versions, Ubuntu seems to be the best for home use, like if you want your kids to have a computer to play games on where they can't just errantly delete files and ruin the computer, and they can't click on a popup and get a virus it is great. Xubuntu is about the same but for Older computers. Also Edubuntu is good for kids because it is Ubuntu with a lot more kids games installed. Another one I liked was Fedora. Fedora is based on Redhat and gets the very latest in app updates, so you get the latest and greatest cutting edge stuff, though it can be a little buggy due to being so cutting edge. Centos is also based on redhat, but updates go through more testing before being released for Centos. Centos is very closely related to Redhat Enterprise Edition, so it is sort of the go-to OS for companies looking for a stable and free server operating system. I know a few people that run Centos on their home computers as well, it has a similar interface to Ubuntu so it is very usable as a home machine too, just not quite as ready-to-go as far as games and music and movies, but still can do all that stuff if you google how-to sites. The last one I'll mention is Mint. Mint Linux is supposed to be great at home computing and server computing but I haven't tried it yet, I've heard great reviews about it from several people so it's probably worth a try.

Oh one more, I heard they released Solaris for free for x86 cpu's, Solaris is "real Unix" so if you need to study real Unix in a way that Linux won't cover then that could be worth a try.

Oh one more, Slackware, it is the "open hood" version of Linux/Unix that is geared toward programming, so if you are looking to get into coding and computer science then slackware may be the way to go.

What UNIX book can I buy that is a recent edition and has tutorial practice exercises?
Q. I need to learn UNIX commands and would like a book that explains it and then gives you exercises to practice.

A. I wouldn't even bother. For a couple of reasons. One of which is that the older books have a LOT of still-relevant information. Also, there are a LOT of good free tutorials on the Web. University of Surrey, Department of Electrical Engineering has produced some excellent tutorials. Professor Stonebank has done this one:

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/index.html

By the way, the Desktop you see in the graphics is Gnome.

There is another good one at:
http://www2.ocean.washington.edu/unix.tutorial.html

The Linux Document Project, believe it or not, has a LOT of good material. Linux after all is a kernel which was written to run G'NU Tools and X-Windows -- both of which were written on UNIX. This particular tutorial was written by Eric Raymond, who is an authority on both Operating systems.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/

UNIX is primarily used by universities and other such groups these days. That means there is a HUGE body of high quality free documentation out there, if you are willing to look.

How to write a UNIX shell utility to find a matching filename in the current directory?
Q. How do I do this?

Write a utility that acts as a front end to find, this utility takes the name of a file as its single parameter and displays the full pathname of every matching filename, searching downwards from the current directory.

It's supposed to be done in C-shell in UNIX. But I really have no idea how to do this. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

A. I think Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna.



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