UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Hi, totally new to linux base using windows when started learning and using computers.
but i remember that one pc was there , look alike windows desktop, but could not do the task as windows just click and open and view edit etc. But, you could do a little differently even saving in and opening of gmails in the form of word documents etc.

What is this environment, that allows all the task with a little different mode in operation?

Normally we could access everything a little differently. Ihave not downloaded and used linux for windows, free to use

Is all the features are same between the two?

only the command line of accessing is different.

Could any one give a basic answer. Are all exe files could be opened in unix based windows?

Is the same directory, but with little different name exist in the two systems?
i will be happy to get the
can i use the ubuntu along with my windows 7 and can i learn basics after installing the os
which is the standard equivalent to windows 7 ultimate

Greetings and welcome to this forum, I think you are still mixed up between what MS Windows and Linux or Unix are, so being wise would be :
Get to understand the differences between the 2 worlds, and understand what is an OS..
Once able to see the difference, its up to you to decide which OS you want to use, if and I can understand for any good reason ( Like having some soft that only runs on Windows etc...) then opt for dual boot
Until then to familiarise yourself with linux world I would suggest you get a live DVD like Knoppix so you have nothing installed on your PC and you can see for yourself what linux and its GUIs are and do

Hi, Thanks. The OS part i could understand and will try knoppix.

But had seen a system maintained by a linux known guy, who helped us with downloading and converting the files.

Just clicking on emails will not be saved correctly and also could open the contents only in a different way. Then i was not exposed to unix system. But my friend suggested there itself to switch to ubantu. Thanks for your tips

I will try to know

windows and *nix are two very different OS'ses. *nix has a long history of time sharing of teletypes (70ths) or ascii video terminals (80ths) attached on small or large (super)minicomputers, as well as running on clustered scientific workstations with attached bitmap displays, or even super computers (100% linux). windows on the other hand is a modern multithreaded/SMP desktop or server environment with roots in 80ths personal- and home computing, running single tasking single user OS'ses, like MSDOS, PCDOS or DRDOS.
You can't run a windows .exe on *nix and vice versa. However you can run it on *nix under wine, a windows emulator, or dosemu(box) for msdos .exe. Or running a whole windows system using a virtualization software. Under windows you can run lots of *nix software using cygwin emulator, or running a whole *nix system using a virtualization software.
On windows the command line is a rather exotic optional feature, disregarded by most of its users. On *nix the command line is much more frequently used, so to say not a feature but a mandatory core component. Most of the binaries running at the command line having a teletype interface just like in the 70ths. Some however are written for ansi terminals, having modern looking full featured formatted screens. Hence you'll have to learn using the command line otherwise you wan't use *nix efficiently.
On windows you're running lots of very popular software with a license for $, whereas all (by most people) really needed software is available at *nix for free, open source or fsf free software. Almost all programming languages including modern IDE's and historic or modern text editors are freely available as well as any kind of web or database server, all running faster and more reliable than under windows. Linux or freebsd OS'ses running on cheaper hardware with less memory usage and much faster io.

To make this clear, UNIX/Linux are not FreeWindowsWithLessBugs(tm). If you look at the ways they differ from Windows and think, "I can use that feature to solve problems," then maybe Linux is for you.

The difference is as much in philosophy as anything. Windows provides the bare minimum of features and expects you to buy upgrades and proprietary programs to make up the difference. Linux has most features available by default, more robustly and with more options, with a less polished interface,

Creating disk images in Windows: Feature removed in 199x when it stopped being DOS, so dish out the moolah for a proprietary implementation.
Creating disk images in UNIX: Disks are literally files, so any command-line utility capable of reading files can deal with disks. Nonetheless there's a variety of tools. It's a bad idea to use them while the partition's being written to, but we can't stop you.

Burning CDROM images in Windows: We added this feature 20 years too late and nobody cares any more.
Burning CDROM images in UNIX: A flagship feature since 1996.

etc.

GUI-wise, Linux/Unix seem to be trying hard to imitate Windows these days. But the GUI is only skin-deep, not deeply integrated.

that's simply not true. Windows is a feature rich OS delivering much more than a base system in a freebsd sense. There are a shell, a editor, a paint program, and a good-for-most word processor: the typical combination we know from classical mac, but more advanced and more featured. Furthermore the user quickly finds out how to install additional ms packages for free, like supershell, and lots of tools. And others like our beloved chrome/mozilla based browsers/mua's, vi/emacs, and open/libreoffice packages. There is a lot of software freely available at windows planet, and lots of typical *nix software around there..

Some of my brothers at TUHS are running windows, just a couple of minutes ago I read some kernel utils code by a very prominent kernel hacker including a #ifdef WIN32 directive, and its OK doing so. ms isn't evil and gates isn't the devil.

But for me a *nix system is better. Its faster, performs better, and is much more transparent, thus I know what's going on on my machine, whereas windows is, what John Socha (NC) said, a giant moloch, too big, and too nanny a-like.

(Apologies for any typos.)

Oh boy this is gonna be hard work and all from memory, I haven't seriously touched Windows for years.
(Who remembers the IBM-XT and CGA, sheesh.)
1) MS-DOS 2.1 to 6.22.
2) DOSSHELL.
3) Windows 2.4x to 3.11/WFWG.
4) Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8-8.1 and now 10 with SOOO many variations on any theme with a proportional price tag.
5) FAT, VFAT and NTFS, (did WinFS ever make it?).
6) INT 21
7) EMS, XMS, UMB, Enable A20 line for an extra 65520 bytes above the 1MB boundary.
8) Real Mode, Standard Mode and Enhanced Modes to current CPU type modes.
9) DOS Extenders.
10) Having to install any new proprietary hardware with supplied drivers. This could end up being a nightmare.
11) And finally MS-Xenix, who remembers that then.

Well contrary to belief Windows 3.00A would install in Real Mode and used DOSSHELL's swapping techniques instead of a swapfile.
There was a file, can't remember which one now, in Windows 3.00A that would allow Windows 3.1x to also work in Real Mode although the same filename in the 3.1x set the minimum of Standard Mode for 80286s, boy did I love hacking.

LIM standards were set up for _memory_management_ and had to work Lotus/Intel/Microsoft's way.

Bloatware slowly became a new buzzword around the Windows environment, however......

There are some seriously professional software tools for this environment and only a very few have reached the *NIX desktop.
MS-OFFICE is pretty much de-facto for the small works office suite and is available for Apple, dunno about *NIX flavours.
Photoshop is well, what can I say, it has its own worldwide buzzword 'photoshopped', says it all really.
Directory Opus, stolen from the AMIGA days, probably one of the best file managers around for any platform. I would love it on my Apple/Linux Mint machines.
As for top notch electronics and engineering CAD stuff, most are not even available for *NIX/Linux.
Windows is usually de-facto for a top notch games machine, although Linux is now becoming recognised by Graphics Card manufacturers.

My first taste of Linux was YGGDRASIL Fall 1995 edition, I never ever got it working. Still got the original two CD disks manual and box.
This put me off until Caldera ? and the sound would not work unless I booted into MS-DOS and run an MS-DOS program to set it up and relied on LoadLin.exe IIRC to start Caldera; one too many MS-DOS inputs put paid to that.
Mandrake 9.0 was my next and actually worked, for a while, then the graphics went to 16 colours instead of 16 bit depth and I couldn't solve that either; goodbye Mandrake, Linux was not quite ready for consumption.

My next was Debian 6.0 around 2011, oh boy this was a revelation, LINUX HAD FINALLY ARRIVED AND COME OF AGE.
This was probably the single most stable OS I have ever encountered and I installed PCLinuxOS 2009 alongside it and was also extremely stable.
Both did exactly what they said on the tin, Debain was more professional and PCLinuxOS was more user/consumer friendly.

There are a plethora of professional level tools to suit everybody nowadays and most are GPL'ed, GIMP for example, but those who have used Photoshop moan about its interface. Sadly however they don't quite match the commercial/professional tools that exist for Windows.
Unlike Windows the *NIX command line and terminal along with its tool chain is a force to be reckoned with, this is probably why MS are building BASH into their environment and I am speculating here all the tools that go along with the shell...

I now run as my second OS Linux Mint 19. This is as solid as a rock, probably more so than my current Apple laptop.

I hope I haven't bored you all too much...


;oD