Summary

Being a UNIX fan doesn't mean that you have to throw away all the best features of desktop operating systems. Whether you're an aficionado of Windows or Macintosh, applications such as the MKS Toolkit and MachTen offer the best of all worlds.

If that's not the direction you'd like to travel, you can create a dual-boot system with a UNIX operating system as the native OS on your computer (PC or Mac) and your regular OS installed too. You simply pick which one you want when you start the hardware each time. I have a Pentium system with three different operating systems installed: Windows NT, Windows 95, and Linux.

You've gotten through the entire book, all 24 hours, and you're now a bona fide UNIX expert. If you follow up by using the system as much as possible for a few weeks, you'll find that the commands, option flags, and pipes all begin to come naturally. Having used UNIX in various flavors for nearly two decades (it's hard for me to believe, but I first logged in as a freshman in college in 1980!) I can assure you that the reason UNIX hasn't changed dramatically is that it's just so darn powerful, comprehensive, and useful.

The time you spend learning to become a UNIX power user will be time very well spent, whether you're aiming at becoming an OS kernel hacker or simply want to be able to make the shared Web server on which you have an account jump through hoops.

Thanks for spending your time learning UNIX with me! Feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions or just want to let me know whether you found the book helpful. You can reach me, at any time, at [email protected].