What's your favorite operating system? Why? I think that there are major and important differences between a desktop and a server operating system. Any thoughts of your own on what they might be?
2:
If you have a Windows system, launch a DOS shell (from the Start button, you can usually find it on your Applications menu, but if not, choose Run). Try some simple directory-listing and file-movement commands, and compare the ease of use with that of UNIX.
3:
If you're on a Macintosh, you have no command-line options if you haven't installed something such as MachTen. An important part of the MacOS design is to hide the command line. What kind of tasks could be a real pain with a graphical interface? How would you accomplish them with UNIX?
4:
One task that would be hard to accomplish without a UNIX-like interface is to step through all the HTML files in a directory, extract all the URLs (they start with a href=), and then produce a unique list of remote URLs for the Web site. How would you accomplish this yourself? (My answer can be found on the book's Web site.)
