To get started as a Linux (or Unix) user, you need to have a good perspective on how Linux works and a handle on some of the most basic commands. This first post in a “getting started” series examines ...

Just because a Unix command is one those most of us learn within the first few hours of our exposure to a Unix/Linux OS doesn’t mean we have grasped the many ways in which it can be used to make our ...

GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

Click to viewThat Mac you're viewing this web page on using a pretty graphical interface? That's a Unix-based system which can run the powerful and age old command line utilities of the most advanced ...

Unix was developed as a command line interface in the early 1970s with a very rich command vocabulary. DOS followed more than a decade later for the IBM PC, and DOS commands migrated to Windows.

In the first installment of this series, we looked at the basics of using the Terminal to access Mac OS X’s Unix core. What’s next? Well, when you visit a new place, the first thing you need to learn ...

Command-line Perl scripts can make adminstering a UNIX box easier by replacing certain commands with some routine scripts. Find out how to take advantage of this approach. Perl is everywhere. Most ...

Today’s hint will probably only appeal to those of you learning to use the Unix side of OS X. A while back, I was trying to capture the ouput of the Unix command httpd -t (which runs a syntax check on ...

It’s been nearly 20 years since I first came across the Useless Use of Cat (UUOC) awards. Unix notable and Perl disciple Randall Schwartz had begun handing out these embarrassing awards around 1995 to ...

In a typical work week, a Unix systems administrator is likely to have at least one small mystery to solve — one “huh?”, one “that doesn’t make any sense” or one “I’ve never seen this before”. Most of ...