Why is unix so hard to catch

Despite their proclamations, Unix refuses to die. In , it's clear that Unix really is the standard operating system, not on desktop PCs, but on smartphones and tablets. It's also the standard system for web servers. The fact is, millions of people around the world have interacted with Linux and Unix systems every day, most of whom have never written a line of code in their lives.

So what makes Unix so beloved by programmers and other techie types? Let's take a look at some of things this operating system has going for it.

User interface design has come a long way since the early days of computing. There are command-line interfaces , graphical interfaces , gesture-based interfaces, you name it. Most serious users, however, prefer the good old-fashioned command line. For one thing, since Unix-based operating systems often live on servers , using text-only software reduces the overhead.

Instead of a dedicated monitor, keyboard and mouse to a server, administrators can log in remotely via SSH either into the machine directly or frequently into a console server, which shows operating system messages and lets them reboot the machine.

These users spend most of their time in the shell , which is the program that takes input and translates it into actions, either running programs or configuring the system.

On Unix and Linux systems, the user has a choice of shells. This shows the preference of modular design in the Unix world. Everything up from the shell to the graphical user interface is just another program, and components can be swapped out easily. It also allows for an approach to development based on small tools. We'll get into those later. One of the things that characterizes Unix-like systems is their dependence on text files , contrasted with other systems of the time that used opaque binary files to store configuration information.

The focus on text irritated some users of other systems, but Unix users like it that way. UNIX was, in some sense, literature to them.

Suddenly the overrepresentation of polyglots, liberal-arts types, and voracious readers in the UNIX community didn't seem so mysterious, and pointed the way to a deeper issue: in a world increasingly dominated by image culture TV, movies,.

Even devices such as the hard drive or the printer are represented as files. They aren't really text files, but programmers can treat these special files as if they are. The shell and having everything as a file lends itself to another major characteristic of Unix development: doing complex tasks by building pipelines out of small tools.

All of the shells have a pipeline character, " ", which sends the output of one program into the input of another. This makes stringing together programs easy. Suppose you wanted a sorted list of all the users logged in to the system with no duplicates as users can log in multiple times. Here's what it would look like:. Although it looks strange, it shows the power of this style of development. If you decided to implement this from scratch in C , you might be looking at thousands of lines of code.

This style of development has been referred to as the Unix Philosophy. You might want to check out Mike Gancarz's book, "Linux and the Unix Philosophy," if you're intrigued. You will be doing useful work very quickly, but it takes time to connect the dots. Unix was developed as a software development platform, where programs were created for various other platforms. Early on in its development, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language.

Unix distinguishes itself from its predecessors as the first portable operating system: almost the entire operating system is written in the C programming language, which allows Unix to operate on numerous platforms. If you want to learn Linux or UNIX, both operating system and command line then you have come to the right place. A Linux Administrator job can definitely be something you can start your career with.

It is basically the first step to start working in the Linux industry. Literally every company nowadays works on Linux. So yes, you are good to go. Skip to content Android Windows Linux Apple.

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