Happy Birthday Febora !!

Linux Man Pages Here:

http://www.istild.com/man-pages/

O'Reilly Media Bookstore

Very interesting pocket guides
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003524/

A complete list of books and pocket guides that O'Reilly publishes.
http://oreilly.com/store/complete.html

Blog 5 --Chapter 4 -- Visual Editors

Blog 5 -- Week 5 Assignment:

Research the Internet to find other text editors for Unix and Linux.

Write a little about the pro's and con's of each. Are they GUI or command line?

There are several options for visual text editors for Linux and UNIX. The oldest one is VI which is about 30 years old. The updated version is called VIM. Pico and Emacs are also very popular. From my reading on the Internet, VI is the most popular. Emacs seems to be a little more difficult to use, however it has more features than VI. Some other text editors are Joe, Nano, Cool Edit, and Nvu. The rest of the text editors appeared to be WYSIWYG editors, some are for use with X windows, some are for UNIX, and some are java based. Some of the GUI text editors are Mined2000, Netscape Composer, Kompozer, and Mnaya. They all seem to be very similar. The main difference I can see is how many key strokes it takes to do something. I believe that it makes sense to learn the VI commands since that program is on virtually every UNIX and Linux machine in existence. There are a couple of text editors that are different, one is called Xeena that IBM uses, and a text editor called Omega that actually translates from one programing language to another. This sounds very handy! There are so many different text editors it is hard to decide which one to use. Jennifer Kyrnin said that she had tested over 40 HTML editors and posted her favorites at this website. Tested over 40 editors, WHEW!! http://webdesign.about.com/od/linuxunixhtmleditors/tp/best_linux_html_editors.htm

Here is a very cool website I found with a chart of VI commands:

http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html

This is the Emacs website:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/

Cream extends VIM to make it easier to use for the average person. If you are used to using VI or VIM but are tired of having to remember all the commands, then Cream is a great alternative

http://cream.sourceforge.net/download.html

Java based web editor:

http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/

Java based text editor:

http://www.jedit.org/index.php?page=download

CUTE User-friendly Text Editor (supposedly easy to use)

http://cute.sourceforge.net/

Environment for Preparing HTML Documents ASHE (A Simple XHTML Editor)

http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~puninj/TALK/head.html

Sea Monkey is more than a text editor, it is an "all-in-one internet application suite" that has a Internet browser, a Mail and Newsgroups client, an HTML editor, and add-ons that enhance its usability.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

This program is a little different, it is for people who can't live without VI, a Vi/vim emulation for Visual Studio, Word, Outlook and SQL Server. I had no idea people could have VI withdrawals.

http://www.viemu.com/

And that is my research on Visual Editors !!

Blog 4 – CIT 173 – Linux

Blog 4 -- Week 4 Assignment:

Textbook page 119, answer the questions to Self Test 3.

1) When you enter the following command, what happened and why?

Cat > dog – nothing happens on the screen, the curser sits at the next line waiting for input. The Default input is the keyboard, whatever you type cat will output to the screen or a file. However, the file "dog" was created.

2) What results from the following commands?

who | grep $USER – This looks for the $USER value, passes it to grep, and grep looks for that value in the output of who. The result is that any line that has my user name in it will be output to the screen.

grep \$HOME file1 – Nothing happens because the backslash is preventing grep from interpreting the "$HOME" command.

echo u* >> file1 – This command finds the lines that begin with "u" and adds the line to "file1".

echo 'u*' >> file1 – This command finds the lines that end with a "u" and adds the line to "file1".

ps – This command lists the processes that are running on the machine. There are two or three pages of switches to modify the information ps looks for.

. fileA – A period at the front of a command with a file name after it, indicates to the shell that all the commands in the file should be read and executed one after the other.

set noclobber – This command changes a setting to on in the shell that will not allow a utility to overwrite what is already in a file if the file already exists. This command is for the csh and tcsh shells.

set -o – This command produces a list that allows you to see if the shell variables are set to on or off. This command works in ksh and bash shells.

chmod + x file2 – This command changes the permissions on "file2" and allows the file to be executed.

3) How can we change the prompt to be "Next?" in both families of shells?

C shell – set prompt = 'Next'

Korn shell – PS1 = 'Next'

4) What data is in each field in the passwd file?

Login (the name of the account), password (your encrypted password), UserID (a number that is assigned to your account), GroupID (users must belong to a group, used to assign permissions), misc (information about the user), home directory (your current directory when you logon), Startup program (the program that is loaded when you log on, usually a shell).

5) What command instructs the shell not to accept CTRL-D as a signal to log off?

In the c-shells use set ignoreeof and in the k-shells use set –o ignoreeof.

Blog 3 – CIT 173 – Linux

Blog 3 -- Week 3 assignment:

List three of your favorite commands and tell why they are your favorite and how you might use them in the real world.

My absolute favorite command is the pipe "|". This makes thing so easy by applying the output of one program to the input of another program. I would use this for counting lists. I could count programs running, directories, files, and lines in files. I like to count things.

My next favorite is the append command ">>". I think this is really useful for adding a few things to a file. I would use this for adding dates to files or for adding instructions to a file after I thought I was done with that file. I could also use it to add something to one of many lists I like to make.

My third favorite command is "touch". I really like how this changes the date of a file without opening the file. I also like how it knows to make a blank file if the name you type does not exist. The main thing I would use it for is backing up files that have been modified recently. Besides the "touch" command allows you to pick files to backup that you haven't actually modified recently. I think it is a very useful command.

Blog 2 – CIT 173 – Linux

Blog 2 -- Week 2 Assignment

Question: What functions do Linux and/or Unix provide in today's business world?

According to our textbook, Introduction to UNIX and Linux by John Muster, "If tomorrow morning all UNIX/Linux computer systems ceased to function, we would be living in a very different world". Many of the things we use run on UNIX/Linux machines, such as the Internet, our universities, banks, and the government. Muster even asserts that UNIX/Linux systems are responsible for all the business that goes on in our world today. UNIX/Linux systems are responsible for much of the data processing that goes on everywhere in today's business world.

I did find out that open source software has made its way into Hewlett-Packard. See the website below for information about HP, open source, and Linux.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/321152-0-0-0-121.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

It appears that most servers run on UNIX/Linux. I know Microsoft makes Server software, but perhaps it is not used as extensively as UNIX/Linux. I was not able to find out any statistics on UNIX, Linux, and Windows servers.

Just for fun, here is a great website that lists over 600 distributions of Linux. The website also has some history on its Linux Distribution Guide page.

http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/

Linux and UNIX

Thinking about starting a new Blog for Linux class.