UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi rbatte1...

I've never had formal training in computer science, all self taught.
I retire in October, this year on my 65th birthday, are you that old? ;oD

However I actually liked the MS-DOS CLI on our ancient IBM XT of the very early 80s.

I especially got to grips with DEBUG.EXE and this is what I weened myself onto 80(88)(86) architecture assembly coding.

Hard going for a beginner to computer coding whose formal profession is an electronics engineer. It was a completely different mindset for me.

I know the MS-DOS prompt is not a UNIX style terminal but it did have its own __shell__ scripting style, much of which I have forgotten now...

However PowerShell is a different animal...

EDIT:

The AMIGA A1200 (New)Shell running 'ADE' the gcc suite and ksh has much the same capability as xterm...

Bazza...

A hard introduction perhaps but not a terrible one. It teaches you the capabilities and limits of the machine from the first, a topic the programmers of this century seem to avoid until all their old bad habits become irreparable anyway.

By 'terminal' we do not mean the programs you run inside it, however.

Hi Corona688...

I appreciate that but the WIndows Command Prompt is a pseudo_terminal with a few resident commands which makes it a pseudo_wrapper for any transient commands.

So in essence it is a terminal with its own builtin shell; that is the way I see it anyhow...

There is also 'mintty' that is part of CygWin, (mini-xterm by any other name?).

The AMIGA CLI is a shell that has no resident commands but will execute any transient ones, again like the Windows Command Prompt is a pseudo_terminal.

It also emulates a large subset of xterm's Escape codes even from its conception...

Bazza...

Started with DecWriter, then TTY33, Then TTY37, then Hazeltine 1200, all pre PC on single user stuff. Dumped into Xenix with console, early Wyse, and Arnet's term followed by SCO Unix with Wy60s then OpenServer with WY60s and Century's emulator TinyTerm. The WY60s and TT gave me the printthru I needed for remote printing without beating my head against the script issues of roll my own.

The TTY37s were cool, but dang, they were heavy to move around.

Besides being heavy, the TTY33 and TTY37 were also noisy and could set up vibrations that would knock things off of nearby bookshelves and desks. Ah, the good old days...

Hi.

I interpret terminal as anything through which I can communicate with a computer, so it might be hardware, but these days it's usually some software package, driving a dumb screen and keyboard, often with a mouse, from the box to which it is attached, so software counts for a lot in that instance.

As with most people, my favorite changed as time went on, First, the convenience of a TTY33, then the smoothness of the TI Silent 700. However, having a CRT was usually superior, so the Heathkit H19 was best for a period. I think I have used a Tektronix 4014, but not for an extended period. The Illinois / CDC Plato terminal was nearly unbelievable at the time. An electric typewriter was used as the console human-I/O device for the CDC 1604 -- very low-speed IO. A similar device (possibly an IBM Selectric) was used for coding in APL (it had a changeable typeball). A special piece of hardware featuring 2 large programmable CRTs was the console for the CDC 6000 series. For development work (typically on weekends) we would sometimes use that console as a terminal. I'm sure there were others -- would a keypunch count? -- but I think I am digressing ( as well as showing my age )

Now I use whatever is around that *nix provides, Konsole, Terminal, xterm, eterm (but not so much the X-Window driving [eg]macs).

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

APL (programming language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

PLATO (computer system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

IBM Selectric typewriter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I like the 3151 myself, mostly because it was able to cope with the weird cabling the RS/6000 needed (you'd need three gender changers and 5 crossovers to make a normal DEC VT220 work) and because the TERMCAP database entries for "common" terminals (like VT100, et al.) were - probably deliberately - FUBAR in AIX. I might even have one still somewhere down in the depth of my attic.

For work i use either a workstation capable of X or - if i have to use one of these Windoze-contraptions - Opentext Exceed, so i can use XTerms. Xdefaults are badly misconfigured in AIX and Linux as well and out of the box XTerms are ugly and cumbersome to work with, but with a little tweaking XTerms are far better (and the same everywhere) than AIXterms (IBMs replacement), dtterms (CDEs replacement) or the G- K- and whatever-terms Linux throws at one. There is nothing as original as the original itself, IMHO.

Here is what i use as Xdefaults for XTerm:

Code:

! /*--------------------- XTerm ----------------------------------*/
XTerm*background:       steelblue
XTerm*foreground:       wheat
XTerm*cursorColor:      black
XTerm*font:             -ibm-roman-medium-r-normal--20-140-100-100-c-90-iso8859-1
! XTerm*iconImage:        /usr/include/X11/bitmaps/xlogo16
XTerm*fullCursor:       true
XTerm*saveLines:                2000
XTerm*scrollBar:              false
XTerm*scrollPosition: right             // seem's not to work
! this is for displaying german umlauts
!XTerm*fontMenu*font1*Label:   ISO8859-Charset
!XTerm*VT100*font1: -ibm--medium-r-medium--20-14-100-100-c-90-iso8859-1

And here are the calls for my preferred XTerm colour schemes, the first one is for editing, the second is my "root window":

Code:

xterm -fg rgb:20/D0/C0 -bg rgb:30/30/50 -cr wheat -fn rom14 -geometry 80x40 -ls
xterm -fg thistle1 -bg rgb:4d/28/4d -cr thistle1 -fn rom14 -geometry 80x40 -ls

What this looks like can be seen here.

bakunin

PS: since this came up: i started my programming career on IBM OS/360 as an Assembler programmer in the late seventies. This Assembler was the first language i learned.