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What are the console and the terminal

xsimsimx

xsimsimx

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 26, 2010
33
0
Guys I been looking around my Mac and I found something named console and terminal.

Well I asked my friends with Mac, the say that terminal is something like the command prompt in windows. I dont know if it is true, so I would like to know

What is terminal?
What is console?
 
Be warned that when you go into terminal you have all the power of *NIX command line and if you don't know what you are doing you can wreak havoc on your system and may even need to reinstall OSx. When I was working we would have new hires who really didn't understand *NIX command line and tended to screw themselves up. I was always annoyed by these smart ass new hires who supposedly had computer science degrees yet didn't really understand *NIXl
 
By the way, what's *NIX

I'm just a student so I would like to know what that is...

:D
 
I once ask my friends what is the UNIX system and they say that it is for making some online game hacks-_-"
 
xsimsimx said:
I once ask my friends what is the UNIX system and they say that it is for making some online game hacks-_-"
Click to expand...

Obviously your friends know very little about the business/scientific world. Many many servers and enterprise systems run some flavor of Unix. Unix grew out of Multics (from MIT/GE) way back, and there are more flavors of Unix than I can really keep track of.

If there are students studying computer science today who don't know Unix, there is a huge gap in their knowledge. It seems that today "computer science" means fooling around with a GUI and writing programs by dragging stuff around. bah.

Since there are so many flavors of Unix, it is common to use *NIX to refer generally to all Unix systems. Even Linux has a lot in common with Unix.
 
MadGoat said:
Is your U key broken? or is it taboo to say UNIX ?
Click to expand...

No, I simply use *NIX since there are many variants of Unix. There is BSD Unix, Solaris, AIX, System V,Free BSD, Open BSD, Net bSd,Minix, System 7, and more that I can't remember offhand.

Before I retired I had to deal with lots of variants and it was common practice in our company to stimply say *NIX in correspondence.
 
old-wiz said:
No, I simply use *NIX since there are many variants of Unix. There is BSD Unix, Solaris, AIX, System V,Free BSD, Open BSD, Net bSd,Minix, System 7, and more that I can't remember offhand.

Before I retired I had to deal with lots of variants and it was common practice in our company to stimply say *NIX in correspondence.
Click to expand...
You could stick to UNIX v3 because OS X has been certified as such since Leopard (same goes for Solaris and AIX btw but I don't know since which version). Officially that's the only way you can call something UNIX. If it hasn't got the certification it isn't UNIX, it's UNIX-like. BSD and the various BSD derivatives (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD, DragonFlyBSD, etc.) are examples of operaring systems that are UNIX-like. See unix.org for more info. It boils down to UNIX being trademarked and operating systems with the certification are being allowed to use the UNIX trademark.

In the end it really doesn't matter much. Even with the certification there are differences between the operating systems. The basics are the same for something like 99%. If you want to learn something about terminal, unix, etc. you can simply use any tutorial (you may need to deviate a little). Do yourself a big favour and only use commands you actually understand. There are quite some manuals around and using the syntax "man <command>" will bring up the manual for <command> (insert whatever command you need).

Using the terminal in OS X can be very useful. It allows you to disable the Ping sidebar in iTunes, revert the traffic light buttons from vertical back to horizontal, etc. There are other tools around that make this a bit easier such as Secrets and Onyx. Again, understand what you're doing before doing it, it will prevent you from breaking your system.

The terminal is a powerful thing and with great power comes great responsibility!
 
xsimsimx said:
By the way, what's *NIX
...
Click to expand...

MacDawg said:
I believe he is referring to all flavors of the UNIX system
Click to expand...

Now I thought *nix referred to Unix and/or Linux, hence the * wildcard? Maybe not.

EDIT: this info from the venerable Wikipedia :)

...Some add a wildcard character to the name to make a euphemistic abbreviation like "Un*x" or "*nix", since Unix-like systems often have Unix-like names such as AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Minix, Ultrix, and Xenix. These patterns do not literally match many system names, but are still generally recognized to refer to any UNIX descendant or work-alike system, even those with completely dissimilar names such as Solaris, FreeBSD or Mac OS X.
 
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