Learning UNIX w/ a Mac Flavor

This guide is written for Linux, but it's pretty basic stuff so it's more or less the same on any *nix. You should be able to follow it:

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

 

Indeed there is a lot of power under the hood. Since OSX is a unix operating system, on the command line it is not much different than any other unix-like operating system, like Linux or FreeBSD. In fact, one of the main reasons I first bought a Mac is because it is a unix os.

Everything you need to know is freely available by googling. I'd start with any unix intro website. Google 'unix introduction'. That will give you the basics. How to navigate around your computer, your home directory, how to do basic file operations, etc.

If you want to start learning how to do more powerful things, like shell scripting, then google "bash introduction". Bash is the default 'shell' for many unix os's, including osx.

Tip: 'man' is your friend. The 'man' program is basically your help system on the command line. From the command line, type 'man <command>' and it will pull a manual page about that command ('q' to exit). For example: 'man ls'.

I'd say the exact opposite

 

Also be careful what you do in the terminal window - it's easy to enter a command that can really mess up OSx.

A good terminal window is better than a GUI in lots of cases - you can get things done faster and you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard. Remember that *nix boxes didn't have GUIs back in the day. I worked a lot with Unix before I used a GUI. I often stuck to the terminal since it was faster for me, even when editing files. Lots of people learned editing with Emacs, which is a very powerful editor.