A Few General Comments

These pages are just one of many resources we offer on the web, and they are certainly not the best. There are already quick overviews, as well as more complete presentations. I have attempted here to collect some resources and hints that may be useful to you in your transition from CMS to Unix, and to present them with some comments about the similarities as well as the differences between the two systems.

For a command comparison, see the seminar handout.

For a general Unix introduction, see the materials to An Introduction to Unix.

For further materials, see the links page.

Unix-Pros:

• files can easily be organized into directories by topic or type (e.g. mail, text-documents, webpages, etc)
• access rights can be set on a per-file basis
• you can publish your own webpages
• all resources you are allowed to see are always available (no more getdisk!)
• software is more up-to-date and far more varied
• multiple simultaneous logins possible
• X-windows (exceed on the public lab PCs) allows a graphical interface
• easily connect to your account from anywhere via telnet

Unix-Cons:

• multitude of cryptic commands and -options
• case-sensitive (leads to frequent typing errors)
• no prefix-commands
• documentation less readable
• no function-keys to save typing