Re: learning unix w/ fbsd?

Begin <3JLrf.5639$oW.3682@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 2005-12-26, bob prohaska's usenet account <bp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In suggesting Mac OS X as a "gentle" introduction to Unix I didn't
> mean to suggest that it's a perfect match; indeed, _I_ don't even
> _recognize_ OS X as having any resemblance to BSD; it truly looks
> like something else, maybe System V but I'm not sure.

There are still people who appear to be knowledgeable about un*x who
then proceed to loudly proclaim that macosx minus the gui equals
FreeBSD. I don't agree, and apparently neither do you, but I can't fault
people for drinking the apple kool-aid, up to some degree. This is not
ment as critique of apple choosing a stable codebase to build their GUI
on, either.


> The recommendation was based more on the existence of 'commando' in
> A/UX. It was a feature that provided "quick and dirty" help with command
> flag options. Alas, it seems to have gone missing in OS X, a very sad
> fact indeed. Commando taught me that the flag options were both useful
> and scrutable, which point the man pages often fail to make persuasively.

To be honest I did not know about that command, which I can't recall
you mentioning. But anyway.


> Given the loss of commando in OS X and the improvements in FreeBSD
> over 386bsd (where I started) maybe I am being silly. The OP observed
> that he had OS X experience, so it's perhaps an idle point. FreeBSD
> is free, so (nearly) is the hardware to run it. There is no personal
> productivity software to match the closed source material on M$ and
> Mac, but that was never the point of FreeBSD.

In this day and age it appears one cannot be ``productive''[1] without
a bitmapped display and a lot of shiny buttons and NO MANUALS.
It is instructive to recall what the first /killer app/ for AT&T unix
proved to be. And golly gee, the descendants of that software still work
nicely. Even if learning it leads one to read books that were written as
far back as the dark ages of 1987.

I am showing off a long and very white beard, amn't I?


> I'll retract my suggestion to start working on Unix via a Mac, and
> agree that one might as well "bite the bullet" and try FreeBSD.

It does appear to be the most direct route. :-)


[1] Funny how these ``productivity index'' and ``web content creation index''
benchmarks refer to hardware/software combinations, where I would expect
the human would be the one responsible for doing the work and organizing
it in a meaningful fashion. Apparently not, and we are but small shell
scripts driven by expensive software companies[2].
[2] Never go off on tangents...

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