Re: Unix top 5 or 10 (was: Linux Lunch and Learns...)

[Ken Hagan <ken@alacrity-it.com>]

Quoting Robert Citek <rwcitek@alum.calberkeley.org>:

> 
> On Friday, April 2, 2004, at 08:23  AM, Ken Hagan wrote:
> > If you're talking mostly to programmers and trying to evangelize 
> > Linux, perhaps
> > you could start by evanglizing UNIX in general?  Explaining how 
> > everything is
> > treated like a file, toolchains, pipes, the things that make UNIX rawk 
> > from the
> > command line.
> 
> If you were to summarize the top 5 or 10 most important principles 
> about UNIX, what would they be?
> 
> 1) everything is treated like a file.
> 2) data is a stream which allows for pipes and redirects.
> 3) small programs that do a few things and do them well.
> 4) a core (kernel) and an API (system calls) with which to talk to the 
> core.
> 5) a shell to tie the first four items together. (insert Tolkien quote 
> about a ring to "bind them")
> 
> Others?
> 
> Regards,
> - Robert
> 

6) Perhaps also mentioning that UNIX is so intrinsically tied to IP that even
interprocess communication usually takes place via IP ports.

7) inetd and its variants and how they control internet services.  Forking
servers vs threaded servers vs combinations.

8) init and how it can be used to take the machine to various levels of
functionality/interactivity without having to reboot 

9) the /proc filesystem and its variants

10) perhaps some history about East Side vs. West Side (pre-notorious BIG)
talking about SVR4 and BSD although it has little application to current *NIX
implementations because they've evolved to the point where it's hard to tell
who came from which hood.

  or even another type of worthless arcana would be a talk about kernel
architecture and compare the Linux kernel with the worlds of Mach and the NT
kernels.  Could help people understand the philosophy of Linux to understand
why the kernel was built the way it was (and there is allegedly some method to
the madness).


Ken Hagan
Technology Consultant
Alacrity-IT, Inc
http://www.alacrity-it.com/
618.499.0108

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