UNIX for Complete Dummies

UNIX

If there's any one "flavor" of DotD that chaps the collective hiney of the Antisocial Network staffers, it's gotta be freelancers who claim expertise and yet pound out utter dumbassery in their content. You wonder how someone who supposedly has the necessary background could get stuff so wrong. It happens, though. We aren't certain why Carlos Mano¹, who claims a masters in computer science, wasn't able to answer what should be a straightforward question: "Pros & Cons of the Unix Operating System" at Techwalla.com.

Even if this dross had been written ten years earlier (2003, that is), Mano should certainly have known that a form of UNIX is the framework on which Apple has built all its iOS systems. That in and of itself should have been mentioned somewhere in the post...

...it wasn't. Instead, Carlos fumbled around for about 500 words telling people that UNIX is a command-line system that has a steep learning curve. Duh: does this yutz not know that Windows is based on a command-line system named MS-DOS that has its own steep learning curve? Apparently he's never opened a command tool...
According to Carlos, a chief advantage of UNIX is that,

"You have more control over the computer with UNIX. Operating systems like Mac OS and Windows are icon and mouse based; using them, you can activate only what the operating system allows you to activate. On UNIX, you can do any of the things that the operating system can do."

Again, Windows command window. None of us uses iOS, but we know people who do and they get into the UNIX substructure from a terminal window. That's not to mention that there are lots of GUIs available for UNIX and Linux, such as RedHat or Gnome. Really, now, shouldn't a computer professional know that? Another thing said "professional" should know is that UNIX is more resistant to viruses, worms, trojans, and other malware than either Windows or iOS.

Mano's apparent unfamiliarity with UNIX continues in some of his "disadvantages." Other than the obvious – you need to know commands to run within a shell (a term he never uses) – Carlos could only come up with a doofus problem like,

"Because UNIX is customizable, different dialects of UNIX have sprung up. "

Which is pretty much bullshit. There are different shell environments (our house expert prefers csh), but the basics don't change. Besides, we're not comfortable taking "advice" from someone who wrote this crapola:

"Standard UNIX users use 'cgup' as the command to change groups..."

Since there is no "cgup" command in UNIX, we can only assume that our Dumbass of the Day fat-fingered "chgrp." Whatever the case, it's pretty clear that Mano had no friggin' idea what he was talking about.

¹ You aren't fooling anyone, Charles Hand.

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