Introduction

Remember the good old days of DOS when everything that you wanted to run or boot up had to be typed at the command prompt? And everything was a lot more manual and not to mention a lot more stable too? DOS may not be used a lot these days but there are alternatives other than DOS such as UNIX.

I know that, to new users, UNIX may look like a totally new language to you. But if the basics are taught, it’s actually quite simple. That is why in this guide I hope that I will be able to teach the basic commands of a UNIX system.

That being said, UNIX was created during the early 1970s by two programmers from AT&T Bell Labs - Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Just for the record, they were also the creators of the C programming language!

Today, the UNIX system is widespread and available from many sources, both free and commercially. Many of today’s operating systems were built around UNIX. The most famous of which is the Linux operating system. Other UNIX-based operating systems include Apple's Macintosh OS X, Sun Microsystem's Solaris and FreeBSD (developed by the University of California, Berkeley), just to name a few.

Okay, enough of the history lessons. Let's take a closer look at UNIX!