Preface
The fourth edition of Unix in a Nutshell brings the book into the 21st century. The term “UNIX” is a registered trademark of The Open Group. It is used for branding systems as compliant with the various standards that collectively define the behavior of a modern Unix system. More informally though, many systems in use today are Unix work-alikes, even though their source code base was developed independently from the original Unix systems.
Thus, the goal of this edition to present the broader state of Unix in today’s world. In particular, it’s important to cover both the commercial variants, and those where source code for the system and the utilities are freely available. To this end, we have chosen to cover these systems, which are representative of “Unix” today:
- Solaris 10
Solaris is the most popular commercial system based on the original Unix System V code base.
- GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux systems have gained a huge foothold in the commercial marketplace. While currently used most heavily for back-end servers, GNU/Linux is also starting to gain ground in the desktop market.
- Mac OS X
Apple’s rewrite of their operating system has a core based on Mach and various BSD technologies. The command set is derived from FreeBSD. Thus, besides having an exciting user interface, Mac OS X is representative of the BSD strain of free Unix-like systems.
The commands covered by the current POSIX standard form the core of our presentation. Each specific system has commands that are unique to it; ...
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