learning basic UNIX

[baharnaz]

i'm heading off into the Navy in December, and while i can't get ahold of an actual textbook i will be using (some kind of secrecy, damn those military guys) someone who was in the same program i will be entering told me i should learn to use UNIX.

so, i got a book, called Practical UNIX from QUE publishing. its a pretty good book, starts from the extreme basics.(such as what a processor is, and what RAM does, etc.)

only problem is, i don't have UNIX, i have Windows. and i do not want to spend a million bucks to get Solaris or something.

so i was hoping maybe one of you guys could direct me to a free/inexpensive or even downloadable UNIX OS that i could use to learn. in this book i have been reading it says that using Linux and UNIX are basically the same, but i really want to use the real stuff instead of Linux, i just don't want to confuse myself too much in the beginning.

any help is appreciated, and thanks in advance.

[baharnaz]

and also, a disk partitioner program too, although i think i will have to part with cash for this one (not too sure about the UNIX either but its wirth a shot...)

thanks again

[Statica]

There are quite a few flavours of UNIX free for download and use .. notable are FreeBSD [www.freebsd.org] it is available for download from FTP mirrors. The list is also at: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html
And then there is OpenBSD which is very secure and available from http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html for list of sites. Just examples of 2 UNIX distribs.

Regarding partition managers? Paying for software is the Windows way of life .. the NIX come with very safe and easy to use partition and boot managers [dont know which you mean]. The NIX use fdisk which is perfect as opposed to PartitionMagic and M$-based fdisk, and FreeBSD uses Booteasy as the boot manager.

No matter which NIX u go for you are covered, just follow the instructions and u'll be fine.

Cheers

[Kamakazie_X]

Linux is user end Unix. the only difference is its free!

http://www.linux.org
http://www.linuxcentral.com
http://www.redhat.com **everyones personal favorite!**

to install linux
make sure your pc will boot the cd rom after your order or burn the iso

in setup make a swap file same size as your ram... so if you got 64mb ram make a 64mb swap file

then make the systems drive

the directory should be set to "/"
and it should be about 1gig+

get partition magic and install it with windows =D

[baharnaz]

i meant boot manager, it was late, i was tired

thanks a lot for your help, meanwhile i have some heavy downloading to do...

[lynchmob]

You might like to go to http://www.cotse.com/miniunix.htm and look at the mini-linux page.There are a number of versions of linux-unix that fit on 1 or 2 1.44mb floppies.You load them on a ramdisk and all hdd options are disabled so it vanishes whenever you restart the system. This looks like a great way to learn unix without having to repartition and worry about bootloaders-you just learn how to use the operating system.HTH
lynch

[Edited by lynchmob on 10-20-2000 at 06:55 PM]

[baharnaz]

wow that is a great option, wish i had seen that sooner

i bought Deluxe Linux 6.0 the other day. it's a special version of Mandrake-Linux distributed by Macmillan Publishing, comes with Bootmagic and PartitionMagic

funny you should mention it, because i had no problems loading the partitions and the OS itself, but when i went back to load BootMagic i didn't delete or disable LILO, cause it never said to and i followed the directions exactly to the letter. after panicking for a few hours because i couldn't get either OS to load, only a few dots on the screen, reading through the various help files and stuff, i finally found the solution, got a DOS boot disk and deleted LILO. scary stuff there, they should tell you about that. but it's going fine now, learning Bourne shell, slowly but surely.

[baharnaz]

oh geez

i guess it wasn't a problem with LILO after all, but i uninstalled BootMagic, that is really a troublesome program and i hate it. it's even a pain to uninstall.

NOW it's working fine, or it will be after i reinstall Linux AGAIN and get LILO back so i can actually switch to the Linux partition.

welcome to the wide world of alternative operating systems i guess.....

[lynchmob]

I'm not too crazy about Bootmagic myself. I also run MDK but it's ver.7.1.I use the Grub bootloader.
Learn the shell 1st,stay away from sokoban,and good luck defending our country no matter who the Commander-in-Chief is going to be.
The miniunix thing could be carried around on floppies anywhere,just like a textbook.
lynch