[baeksoo]

I'm wondering, how good is OS X for the purpose of learning UNIX? How does the experience compare with doing the same on Linux or FreeBSD?

Could UNIX knowledge learned using OS X later be applied to say...learning/using Solaris or AIX (or Linux for that matter)?

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by baeksoo:
I'm wondering, how good is OS X for the purpose of learning UNIX? How does the experience compare with doing the same on Linux or FreeBSD?

Could UNIX knowledge learned using OS X later be applied to say...learning/using Solaris or AIX (or Linux for that matter)?

OS X is great, not just for learning about Unix, but as a unix environment in its own right. I've been both a long time Mac and Unix user and now work exclusively on a powerbook (and remotely to larger linux/unix machines).

Three moderate differences: administration of users, groups, services; the graphical environment; paths.

Users, groups, and services are managed quite differently in OS X. You probably won't be dealing with these issues right away, so don't worry about it too much.

Graphical environment: This is probably the biggest difference in moving between systems. This isn't a problem, however, because you can familiarize yourself with these other graphical environments by installing X11 on your mac. It's important to know and understand X11 since most of the unix utilities you will use will require it. And you can do lots of cool things with it too that will enhance your workflow.

Finally, paths. The filesystem is laid out a little differently on the mac than other flavors of unix. If you are looking to install unix utilities on your mac, there is a an open source package manager called fink which hides most of these details from you. I have used fink for a long time, but only recently have gotten away from using it, prefering instead to build everything from source myself. Makes upgrading more time consuming, but the installation is less of a black box.

Finally, some commands on other unices behave slightly differently. This is no big deal - and you will only realize these differences when you start to work on the other machines.

Any knowledge gained from using the Terminal in OS X (or X11) will be invaluable for learning unix. Like I said earlier, I work on unix boxes all day long from the comfort of my powerbook. It rocks. Good luck! You're going to start spending alot of money on O'Reilly books!

[pwolfe1]

I agree to a certain extent. IMHO, I think I got more out of learning something POSIX compliant like linux first, and then moving to something a little more exotic like OSX. I would advise learning linux, since that is far more similar to UNIX than OSX. Once you have the basics of UNIX, you'll feel comfortable on any UNIX based system.

OSX is great if you already know some UNIX, but since OSX hides most of the system directories on you, the only way your gonna learn is from the command line. sometimes it helps to see the directories in your file manager though.

Final thought: Just dual boot it. then you can compare the two, and see the differences yourself!

[baeksoo]

Final thought: Just dual boot it. then you can compare the two, and see the differences yourself!

Is Linux fairly easy to install onto a Mac? I see people recommending the Yellow Dog distro, but howabout something like Red Hat, Suse, or Slackware?

[pwolfe1]

yellowdog and mandrake would be my recommendations. I have Mandrake 9.1ppc on mine. thats my distro of choice for x86, so thats what I use on my mac! mandrake has an extremely easy install program. and a huge community following too! www.mandrakeusers.org

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by pwolfe1:

OSX is great if you already know some UNIX, but since OSX hides most of the system directories on you, the only way your gonna learn is from the command line. sometimes it helps to see the directories in your file manager though.

What is unix but the command line? Anybody can (or should be able to) quickly learn a graphical interface, even the annoying and aggravating ones typical of Unix systems. When you are talking about "learning unix" you should be talking about the command line. That's what it's all about, and Mac OS X is perfect for people who want to get their feet wet. And it's perfect for people with lots of unix experience, too.

And if you must, you can de-hide system directories in the Mac GUI by editing /.hidden.

[riverfreak]

One more thing. You want to learn unix or linux? Find people who are running these systems and get them to give you an account.

Then you can run around and check out the filesystem, see how commands behave differently, etc. I work on many, many flavors of unix but that does not mean that I'm physically sitting at the machine.

(And if you want to see the graphical environments of those remote machines, you can do that, too).

Dual-booting is kinda kewl, and is an easy way to experience some of the growing pains of linux, but I recommend against it (especially if you can get remote access to these machines).

1) Rebooting is a pain
2) OS X has everything you need
3) The kewlness factor goes away pretty quickly
4) You'll want to recover the space you set-aside for more aac's and then you'll really be

[pwolfe1]

what I meant by the hiding was that most UNICES do not jest let you install an app to your /Applications folder. I just reccommended getting in there and spanning installed apps across many different mount points, that kind of thing. If I were to recommend learning UNIX, I would advise to try as pure as you can get, and then delve into the more exotic stuff.