macOS X [UNIX crash course needed!]

[madra]

hi.

been testing the public beta of macOS X[nbsp][nbsp]on and off for the past few weeks and[nbsp][nbsp]although it's a bit slow and clunky [hopefully due to debugging code] in beta form it looks like it'll be a pretty good OS when it's finally released.[nbsp][nbsp]

trouble is, as an inveterate tinkerer and customiser, i haven't a clue where to start when it comes to looking under the bonnet of OS X.[nbsp][nbsp]as it's based on UNIX all my traditional mac OS hacking tinkering and general messing about skills will soon be redundant.

i'm not an idiot but as a graphic designer the only experience i have of UNIX is the odd bit of telnetting into[nbsp][nbsp]my futurequest account, where i usually type "help" and then stare in bewilderment at the online manual for a few minutes before retreating back to the safety of my GUI.

anyone know of a good guide to UNIX for the computer literate UNIX virgin?[nbsp][nbsp]all i've found so far seems to be either patronisingly superficial...

[nbsp]"this is a computer. press the buttons on the keyboard to[nbsp][nbsp]make the corresponding letter appear on the big television screen"

...or the kind of terminology spouted by justin and the other propellorheads on these forums, which make me think the babel fish has fallen out my ear...

"if you kill root while chron-genning your bin bash that will obviously chmod the shell... but don't forget to pico the overlay USR privelege or you'll terminalise the thread on the heap!"
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my dreams one to the other said
this life has let us down
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<font color=#FF0000>www.madra.net</font>
[i][a motley collection of crap from[nbsp][nbsp]irish &amp; UK artists.]
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<font color=#FF0000>www.macwishlist.com</font>
[share your brainwaves for the future of the apple mac]

[Nabil]

I've got my old PowerMac 8600/250 running the Q3 release of LinuxPPC 1999.[nbsp][nbsp]Still don't know what I'm doing, but I have found that: 1) Folks who use forms of UNIX love to write emails, and are fairly friendly; 2) slashdot.com is your friend (hey, it's how I found out about FutureQuest!); 3) You can't go wrong with O'Reilly.

The best thing you can do, I think, is go over to your local bookstore and pick up some O'Reilly books.[nbsp][nbsp]Best bet would be to peruse the selection and make the choice based on what you already know and what exactly you WANT to know, but Linux in a Nutshell is a good start.[nbsp][nbsp]Problem with that idea, though, is technically MacOS X is based off BSD, not Linux (both are flavors of UNIX).[nbsp][nbsp]It will still give a lot of information on basic, semi-universal commands and the jargon, however.[nbsp][nbsp]For more BSD specific things, I'd suggest heading over to www.bsd.org (http://www.bsd.org), and exploring from there.

Hope I've been of some help.

Be well,
Nabil

[sheila]

&quot;if you kill root while chron-genning your bin bash that will obviously chmod the[nbsp][nbsp]shell... but don't forget to pico the overlay USR privelege or you'll terminalise the[nbsp][nbsp]thread on the heap!&quot; ROFLMAO