Overview

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

This book provides an introduction to the UNIX operating system. Most introductory UNIX texts assume no prior knowledge of interactive computing. Here, you must have a working knowledge of the OpenVMS operating system from Hewlett-Packard (HP), because this text is designed to help you make a smooth transition from OpenVMS to UNIX. This book started as a user's guide for a group of scientists who saw an increasing need for OpenVMS users to compute on processors running the UNIX operating system. Recognizing that mixed operating system environments like ours were becoming more common, we decided to expand the user's guide into the more comprehensive text presented here.

This book was developed originally in response to the increase in UNIX usage compared to OpenVMS. This book does not, however, attempt to convince the OpenVMS user that UNIX is a preferable operating system: We do not regard UNIX as a better operating system than OpenVMS, nor OpenVMS as superior to UNIX. Each has strengths and weaknesses, which we note when relevant to the comparative teaching process that the text employs throughout.

The text is intended to do more than describe how to perform a given OpenVMS command or function in UNIX. Certainly such descriptions are useful and may represent all that the occasional UNIX user requires. However, for those who intend to develop complex applications, we have tried to show some of the features that make UNIX a powerful development medium.

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