Blog Series: WoG, Cesky Krumlov; Day 2: Unix

Dr. Julian Catchen
University of Oregon
Full-time Unix Ninja

Topic: Unix

So in my prep blog on programming I went through some of the basics of command-line and ninja-ery. But really you cannot do Unix command-line justice unless you jump in and do it yourself with the UnixTutorial provided. Additionally, Julian's slides are up on that same page and there are great at illustrating comparisons between what we are used to (graphical user interface) and how that translates or what that looks like on the command-line (or in the terminal) and the slides are in pdf format, so download them and learn about the history of Unix and take the tutorial.

Highlights?

• Unix was originally developed by AT&T!
• Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, developed Nextstep, Apple went into the tubes, re-hired Steve Jobs--Steve Jobs promptly threw their operating system out and applied Nextstep which because OSX (it's Unix based).
• Google Android runs Linux
• Airplanes with personal movie systems run Linux
• Wireless internet routers run linux
• By the end of these two weeks he plans to make us Unix/Linux converts
• We googled 'unix commands' to obtain a cheat sheet of commands to help us if we forget, HEY there is also a cheat sheet I linked for you on the programming prep blog--go figure! :)
• By the end of this session you should know about the following, if not, go back to his slides and the Unix Tutorial

1. change directories
2. list files, list all files, list files that humans can read
3. move up and down commands on the command line
4. create directories
5. know what relative vs. absolute paths are
6. know how to figure out where you are
7. know three ways to 'get home' from anywhere on the computer system
8. know what tab and tab tab do and why they are totally cool
9. more, head, tail and cat
10. know how to unzip and de-tar files or do both at once
11. what is grep?
12. how to obtain line counts in a file

There is a slide called "Explore the file hierarchy" YOU CAN DO THIS WITHOUT WORKSHOP FILES! Explore your own computer file system! Huzzah!

My favorite quote of the evening:

"When you type 'cd ..' it's a like a worm hole that comes and sucks you up a directory, it's really cool" ~Dr. Julian Catchen, Workshop on Genomics, Cesky Krumlov 2013