Customer Reviews

Learning Unix for Mac OS X, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Learning Unix for Mac OS X" is a disappointing effort by O'Reilly to introduce Unix to Macusers new to OS X. While the book succeeds in showing readers some simple commands to navigate through Unix, its coverage is far too shallow. Macusers interested in knowing just the basics will do better with David Pogue's section on Unix in "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual." That section alone probably contains more than 50% of the material in "Learning Unix for Mac OS X."

If you are *serious* about learning Unix for Mac OS X, get a copy of "Mac OS X: Unleashed" by John and William Ray. At +1,000 pages, the book is a doorstopper, but it covers almost everything a Unix power user aspirant would want to know: how to navigate through Terminal, set up an Apache webserver with PHP and MySQL, etc. Again, get "Mac OS X: Unleashed" only if you truly want to unlock the power of Unix in OS X.

In short, whether you are a casual or power user interested in learning Unix for OS X, there are better options other than "Learning Unix for Mac OS X."

This is a terrific introduction to the Unix underneath Mac OS X from a couple of authors that know Unix inside-out. With coverage of the Terminal app, shell scripting, aliases, changing your command prompt, how to launch Aqua apps from the command line, and much, much more, I think it's a great addition to your Mac OS X library.

It is less than 200 pages, but, frankly, I found this refreshing, given that I have lots of 700-900 page books that I only read the first 50-100 pages of anyway. The authors haven't been too badly influenced by their longer books either - Learning Unix for Mac OS X doesn't have page after page of useless "history" and "philosophy" in this tome. It's all focused and has lots of helpful examples.

I am not sure what the other posters thought but this book simply brought you into the world of UNIX. For some reason they thought they were going to learn in-depth UNIX in 150 pages. "Learning UNIX for OS X" is just a small step into learning the command line interface in Mac OS X. This book does not show you architecture of the OS nor advanced commands, Mac OS X Unleashed goes over these in-depth. OR if you want to master the command line, get O' Reilly's "Learning CSH & TCSH". The only real problem I had with this book is that it was an alteration of the already being published "Learning UNIX" book by O'Reilly which I own as well. While this book wasn't a waste of time, quite a bit was identical.

Unless you are a complete UNIX dummy, there is not much to expect (or benefit) from this book. Its meager 158 pages only succeeded in brushing around the very basics (and simple commands). Apart from its cogent narrations on how best a novice could explore UNIX applications and use command interface, there is little that shine in this book.
Anyone who knows one or two things about UNIX is likely to be disappointed by its inept coverage. Hence, I would advise such person to opt for "Mac OS X for Unix Geeks", which provided a more palatable gist in a chronological order. Versatile enthusiasts, who are interested in advanced explorations, should consider "Mac OS X Unleashed". One of its chapters on Unix-Mac relationships did eclipse anything this book can boast of.

I have recently fallen in love with Macs. I had been a Windows developer for 15 years. Occasionally I have had to poke around on the Solaris command line at work, but I am a Unix newbie. This book does a great job of laying out the basics of Unix for people who have little or no Unix experience. This book does not provide a "quick start". It does not go into excessive depth on Unix. But it does provide fundamental building blocks for expanding one's Unix knowledge. My suggestion to Unix novices: read this little book from cover to cover. Then you'll be able to take advantage of all the free articles and technical documentation that explain how to do the fun, tricky stuff.

I was very disappointed when this book came. I didn't realize how thin this book would be from the description. I am a fan of the O'Reilly books, and their reputation led me to believe there would be a little more "meat" here.

At a glance it appears to be well organized and written. This would be a good first half of a book, or the book should be half the price.

I don't understand who the audience would be for this book. In my opinion (I might be wrong here) anybody who is even INTERESTED in the OSX terminal already knows about CD, LS, PWD, MKDIR, CHMOD, and MV... and that is half the book! I am going to be a lot more careful when I order O'Reilly books from now on.

(Two stars because it is well organized but a third of what should be there).

In the vast world of Linux/UNIX, I found it hard to know where to start learning. I figured that since I knew a significant amount about OS X that this book might make for a good beginning level book. I was so right. For someone who knows absolutely nothing about UNIX commands, this book is for you. You will learn the absolute basics and nothing more. Keep that in mind: you will not learn anything beyond the basics. If you're looking for something a little more comprehensive, then look somewhere else. However, if you are looking for a short, basic introduction to the world of UNIX so you can get around, this book is definitely for you.

This is a useful book for anyone who has no knowledge of UNIX commands, or whose knowledge is minimal. Otherwise, I would recommend "Mac OS X for UNIX Geeks" instead.

This is a good start for Unix on OS X. However, I finished it quickly and it just left me with more questions and a need to purchase a more exhaustive book on Unix if I want to truly get into it.

However, it does do a good job explaining the Unix file system, permissions and can help you streamline the process of copying or moving large numbers of files and dealing with their permissions without dealing with the Aqua interface which is overly cumbersome for those tasks.

This is a pleasant introduction to Unix that someone just starting out with Mac OS X will find very useful. Don't bother with this if you are already experienced with Unix or Linux, but if you've never been at a Unix command line in your life, this is a good place to start.

I liked that the authors went to some effort to cover what could go wrong with the examples they used. I think it was also good that they covered Fink and a few Unixy applications like Pine.

There are bigger and more inclusive books out there, but the brevity of this (128 pages) makes it very non-threatening for the command-line phobic. The back cover states that its target audience is traditional Macintosh users, and while I don't fall into that category at all, I suspect that even the most fearful will find this to be a painless experience.

I did think it a little odd that the Apple Developer Connection considers this a "Recommended Title". While it's certainly true that developers can be just as Unix naive as anyone else, I would think that most Mac Developers would want something far more techy than this. I don't mean to imply that this is just fluff; but it definitely is just a light surface treatment and wouldn't seem to take a developer where they probably want to go. I could be wrong, of course.