UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm a new to UNIX/LINUX. I just put cygwin on my laptop and I can navigate around the directories, but I can't open files (.doc, .ppt, .html or .exe). Is there an explicit command to do this? I know that in Solaris when it does not recognize the file, it brings up the list of available viewing applications, much like Windows, but I've looked through all my UNIX books and can't find a thing about opening files. It's mostly about navigating through directories and cmds and flags for display of info. I know cygwin is a LINUX emmulator, but I have a feeling that this is not specific to UNIX/LINUX. It's either cygwin or it's my lack of knowledge. Please let me know if you've had similar problems or if you see blatant stupidity here. It's possible. I've just migrated to UNIX from a life of Window$ and I'm admittedly still green.--thanks--AJ

well what command are you using to open the file? you can open anything (except binary files) with a pager like less

eg:

less filename.whatever

you need a viewer for different types of files.

if you want to parse an html file you could open it with lynx if you have it installed

eg:

lynx something.html

if you want to execute something you would generally do it with:

./filename

and so on.

OK, I tried the less command and it worked on my .exe files, which is good, but I'm still perplexed about other files. It sounds like it might be a cygwin thing. If I want to open up a file on my desktop called test.doc, MS word, how could I do that like I would if I were just double-clicking on the object on my desktop using Windows2000? That's my current point of being stuck, but thanks for the help you've provided already.

i dont know there may be a commandline app for viewing .doc files, search freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net for something like that.
otherwise why not use word? if your running X on cygwin then you can download openoffice or kword or something like that.

ppt and doc are MS Office files on Windows. On Unix/Linux we do use OpenOffice to open MS Office files, simply because it is the best alternative for MSO on non-Windows platform. So you are on Windows, why not fire up MS Office to open them?

IMO cygwin does not give you a true Unix environment. If you want to try PC-based Unix, try some distro of Linux. IMO cygwin is good for being able to display forwarded X11 connections from remote servers without paying for an X emulator on Windows. Beyond that, messing with cygwin doesn't really worth the effort.