OK! I got the 'basics'. Whats the best way to dive into Terminal/Unix?

[akm3]

My Mac Mini still runs Tiger, but I love it. Total Windows convert. I got my basics down and am fully productive on Mac now. (Thanks everyone for the help!)

What I want to do now is go deep and learn the power lurking under the hood. I'm very familiar with MS-DOS but have zero Unix knowledge or terminology.

Can someone recommend a good book or website to learn 'under the hood'? Also, what can I do 'under the hood' that I can't do through the GUI?

Thanks! This forum has been a huge help!

-Allen

 

[wightstraker]

Can someone recommend a good book or website to learn 'under the hood'?

O'Reilly has a pretty good tutorial that will give you a good sense of how to move around the terminal and what it can do. Once you get a basic grasp of Unix commands, though, the best way to learn will be to practice. Find ways to integrate the terminal into your daily workflow (trust me, you will).

Also, what can I do 'under the hood' that I can't do through the GUI?

A solid knowledge of the terminal gives you access to thousands of tools that you use all the time, except instead of being split between dozens of applications, you have them all in one place. The terminal gives you the power to do useful tasks that you do every day - for example, transferring files to an ftp server - all in one place, and at no extra cost. You will soon realize that it's kind of silly to pay $20 for an ftp client when you can do it all in the terminal. Here's a small list of the kinds of clever things you can do.

 

[akm3]

That is a great link. The basics are more similar to DOS than I'd hoped (Obviously this was intentional by the creators of DOS)

Thanks for the link!

 

[kaltsasa]

Fink and Darwin Ports are gifts from above. Get those and you have access to a treasure trove of open source tools like the amazing CDPR (Cisco Discovery Protocol Reporter), which makes easy work when I need to set specific ports to different vlans. If there's a tool you need odds are they have it for you.