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On Thursday 13 May 2004 10:05 am, Meyer, David R wrote:
> Hello,
>
> A co-worker of mine asked if there is such a book that converts DOS
> commands into Linux to help him learn how to do things.
>
> I don't know if such a book exists, but given the HUGE number of tech
> books, I was hoping someone out there may know of such a book and can
> point me in the right direction.
>
> I have searched online for one but didn't find anything that appears to
> be what he is looking for.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Dave
Though such a thing would have some limited use, Linux/Unix has a very
different philosophy which needs to be understood. It really is much much
better to sit down and study a basic Linux book.
Learning to sail by studying how to drive a motor boat is not too helpful
and can actually sink you as some things are done opposit. There are about
three hundred utility commands available in Linux. So trying to think DOS
while working in a Unix will not work too well. I know it's tempting to,
but you will only end up confusing yourself.
Use the knowledge of DOS as background materials as to how things CAN work
in a computer. How you have different components working together.
Then forget about the DOS commands to Linux book. Tell him to go to a book
store and sit down and read the beginnings of a few basic Linux books until
he find one that is easy to understand. Go home and practice. Then buy a
few more books and continue to educate yourself.
These are the immediate things that comes to mind, as a simple bridge.
copy is cp
move is mv
rename is mv
dir is ls, dir, vdir
type is cat, more, less
edit is vi, joe and a number of others
batch files are (similar to) shell scripts
you find files with find, locate, whereis
search file content with grep
help files for commands are found with man, info
usually typing --help after a command will list the syntax
howto's are writeups on how to do things
Any file can be executeable by setting the execute flag, have nothing to do
with the extension of the file. (I.e. not .bat, .com or .exe. Though many
uses .sh to identify shell scripts.)
The idea is that you have many small tools that does one thing really well.
So to take multiply actions you pipe | the result of a command into another
as everything is able to talk to anything. Some things are not intended to
talk to somethings. Like sending audio output into the video card. But you
could. Thus you have a tremendous flexibility based on simplicity.
This is how you have a GUI which can be loaded on demand. In other words you
start software to have a GUI only if you need it, unlike windows.
Everything is modular.
Unix/Linux looks cryptic because they (the developers of it) wanted to keep
things simple. So you have mv and cp as it's faster to type. (A number of
msdos commands are available for FAT partitions. They are preceeded by a
'm'. I.e. mcopy. But do you really need to use FAT today? It's not too
reliable or efficient in terms of speed and space. If you go to Linux you
have much better file systems avalable to you.)
- --
Steve
"They that would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
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