[X-Unix] rsync & ssh

[David Ledger]

>From: Stroller <MacMonster at myrealbox.com>
>
>Unfortunately, learning Unix is just plain hard. Any Unix "gurus" you
>meet will probably have suffered a great deal of frustration &
>exasperation in the acquisition of their knowledge, and they surely
>spent lots of time doing things the long &/or hard way in the process.

I'll agree with you there.  The first 3 years were particularly heavy .

>Unix is *horribly* obscure & complex, and for no good reason other than
>compatibility with legacy systems.

Not sure what you mean here.  I can't think of any legacy systems 
it's particularly compatible with.  It's certainly complex compared 
with a lot of what came before.  VMS is the only system I've met that 
came close.  BUT it is the most flexible and has the greatest range 
of possibilities.  What other mainstream operating systems are there 
now?  MacOS (<=9) is designed to perform a limited task set for 
_users_, and what it does it does well.  Linux can be considered 
Unix.  VMS is still alive and well (at least for the next 24 years, 
anyway).  Personally, I find VMS more obscure than Unix, but I did 
learn it 3 months _after_ starting Unix.  The M$ O/Ss seem to be more 
a collection of bits glued together by a disjoint mind than a system 
designed to give operational access to the power of a processor.  To 
a person who has never used a CLI before, Unix must be obscure, but 
that obscurity clears once you understand the underlying principles. 
It then becomes obvious and almost natural.  (The flags used to 
control individual utility commands were decided on by the individual 
writers, and so are not part of the Unix philosophy).  I think the 
keys are to understand the process model and to know exactly what 
your chosen shell is doing for you.

Any CLI based O/S is bound to allow more complexity.  When it comes 
down to it, the number of things you can do with an 80 char command 
line is limited to about 10^80.  With a GUI, if the designer didn't 
think to give you a button/box/menu for it, you can't do it.

>  I personally spent several hours
>trying to change the time on my first Unix system, although that
>includes time spent reading some of the fascinating notes notes on
>world timezones

That was one advantage of having my first Unix course start before 
the hardware was delivered.  We had some understanding before the 
opportunity for confusion arrived.

>  If you find what you're
>learning useful &/or interesting then stick with it! It will become
>easier.

Very true.  It can even become enjoyable if your brain is twisted the 
right way.

David


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
Chair of HPUX SysAdmin SIG of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
dledger at ivdcs.co.uk (also dledger at ivdcs.demon.co.uk)
www.ivdcs.co.uk