Best UNIX Guide to Mac OS X ?

retrograderetrograde
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
What are people's opinions on the best UNIX oriented guide for Mac OS X?



The options I see are:



Learning UNIX for Mac OS X Panther by Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson



Mac OS X Panther for UNIX Geeks by Brian Jepson and Ernest E. Rothman



Unix for Mac: Your Visual Blueprint to Maximizing the Foundation of Mac OS X by Sandra Henry-Stocker and Kynn Bartlett



UNIX for Mac OS X: Visual Quickpro Guide by Matisse Enzer



The Mac OS X Command Line: UNIX Under the Hood by Kirk McElhearn



I realise I have left out some books geared towards programming and UNIX but the person I am looking to buy this book for is not a hard core programmer and just wants to get to grips with how UNIX works with the Mac OS: she is coming from experience using old Sun Sparkstations.



In any case, let me know what you think and if there are any I have left out that ought to be considered. Thanks.



(I considered making this a poll but I doubt my list is comprehensive!)

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Interesting thread. I can't add anything, I'm just a Mac technology newb, but I'll eventually need this kind of books as well. I'm currently learning on basic BSD admin.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    :-):-) Posts: 110member
    Hi



    I posted a similar question not so long ago (link )



    I personnally ordered Mac OS X unleashed (Ray & Ray) and Learning UNIX for Mac OS X (Taylor and Peek). I recieved the first a few days ago and it seems very good.



    Tip: I bought older editions of both for between $1-2 of amazon.com, for unleashed this means its based around Jaguar - but for the UNIX part I guess that shouldn't matter to much - and even so it's just a dollar...



    hope this helps



    :-)
  • Reply 3 of 7
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    Teh intarweb is the best source of info on the Unix underpinnings of OS X, imho.



    If searching for 'unix' isn't doing it for you, pop 'linux' into your search terms, as ~85% of linux info applies to OS X as well.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by :-)

    Hi



    I posted a similar question not so long ago (link )



    I personnally ordered Mac OS X unleashed (Ray & Ray) and Learning UNIX for Mac OS X (Taylor and Peek). I recieved the first a few days ago and it seems very good.



    I learnt 'nix from the Ray brothers' excellent book, but I suspect that it's probably a little basic on the 'nix side for someone who professes to be comfortable with the Solaris command line. I'm not convinced that the 'nix-y differences between Mac OS and Solaris/Sun OS are large enough to justify buying a book ? reading the man pages might be good enough. On the other hand, it is a good general introduction to both the GUI and various aspects of the BSD userland, including some of the weird stuff (Netinfo).



    At any rate, Mac OS X Panther for UNIX Geeks by Brian Jepson and Ernest E. Rothman is probably a better bet, as it's intended for people already comfortable with 'nix, who are interested in moving to Mac OS X. I haven't used it, but I've heard good things, and at least conceptually it's the best fit.



    -S
  • Reply 5 of 7
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R

    Teh intarweb is the best source of info on the Unix underpinnings of OS X, imho.



    If searching for 'unix' isn't doing it for you, pop 'linux' into your search terms, as ~85% of linux info applies to OS X as well.



    Eh. Not so much.



    I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to edit my $PATH setting in 10.3 so that it stays edited in between sessions. Still no-go, despite various methods from OS X and *nix websites. Not to mention tips from users online.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kesh

    Eh. Not so much.



    I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to edit my $PATH setting in 10.3 so that it stays edited in between sessions. Still no-go, despite various methods from OS X and *nix websites. Not to mention tips from users online.



    Assuming you're using bash, which you should be if you did a clean install, open a terminal, type



    sudo pico /etc/profile



    enter your administrator password when prompted, find the line which starts with PATH, add a colon followed by the path you want to add to the end of the string, and hit control-o to save, then control-x to quit pico.



    What's going wrong from the above?
  • Reply 7 of 7
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by staphbaby

    Assuming you're using bash, which you should be if you did a clean install, open a terminal, type



    sudo pico /etc/profile



    enter your administrator password when prompted, find the line which starts with PATH, add a colon followed by the path you want to add to the end of the string, and hit control-o to save, then control-x to quit pico.



    What's going wrong from the above?



    The fact that I had no idea how to use pico, and no one online ever went into detail on the commands to use. They just said 'use pico to edit your profile'. Actually, I only saw that idea once... most of the other tips I saw involved editing invisible files and such.



    Thanks, that seems to have worked beautifully.
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