I just got hired for an entry level position with my school's ITS department and I am going crazy right now cause I can't seem to use the right UNIX commands. I am so nervous that i am going to screw up and ruin this opportunity.

Get Virtual Box running on your pc and run a local copy of a unix distro Quick!

What UNIX do they run there?

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Dauphin said:

Depending on the distro, Linux has a lot of similar commands. You may be able to take an old pc and run OpenSolaris on it. It's been discontinued for a few years now, but I think it's still out there. The core is very close to the main UNIX lines.

The best way I learn a new O/S is to just put it on a machine, with a fully functioning laptop next to me and google already in an open window. Then I try to get the O/S to install, run, update, get on the internet, connect to network resources like printers and file servers.

Shit, I still don't know all the things I can do with vi! lol But I haven't had to use that for a hella long time.

I have a mac and OS x is a unix based thing and i have used commands on this for various things but I don't work on things that like enough to recall. With that being said, like this person says to play around with OpenSolaris (which has changed the name of it's open source stuff) there's so much that linux has to offer for free as well... yet another unix based family of operating systems and since a lot of people are using macs and linux these days... keep talking to people who use those OS as well.

LOT'S of people use linux and many of them have to write their own drivers for all kinds of stuff so maybe go to a linux forum if you get stuck on something, because whatever you're running... people who are into linux may likely be real familiar with it. it's weird because linux is even used in a lot of businesses on their servers... like linux red hat... so something you are running might even be linux. There is NO TELLINg how many forums exist for linux help because that is how all that got so big in the first place.

Dauphin said:

Depending on the distro, Linux has a lot of similar commands. You may be able to take an old pc and run OpenSolaris on it. It's been discontinued for a few years now, but I think it's still out there. The core is very close to the main UNIX lines.

The best way I learn a new O/S is to just put it on a machine, with a fully functioning laptop next to me and google already in an open window. Then I try to get the O/S to install, run, update, get on the internet, connect to network resources like printers and file servers.

Shit, I still don't know all the things I can do with vi! lol But I haven't had to use that for a hella long time.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the right commands". If you mean you don't know what to type in the terminal view or in a terminal emulator window then it's not that different from MS-DOS. Most UNIX and LINUX variants should have the same commands as MS-DOS with some variations (such as "cd .." instead of "cd.." and so on). They only have the basic and the rest is determined by what type of additional software the system runs. I highly doubt you are required to "write drivers" or anything of the kind by your employer.

Most executable commands also display a set of optional commands ("flags") if you just add "-h", "--h", "-help", or "--help" after the command. It's not that hard after a while. Using a GUI like GNOME or KDE on UNIX / LINUX isn't any different than using Windows or Mac OS. You'll just have to resort to using a terminal quite often because many of the things just haven't been implemented to the graphical interface yet (yes, sometimes you can blame the laziness of the developers). On my Linux setup I have to do tasks as simply as changing the background image by using command line, but that's not because Linux itself is "hard to use". It's just because I'm too stubborn to use a desktop environment like GNOME or KDE to make things easier for me.

You can run Linux from so-called LIVE CDs / DVDs as well. No need to install anything with those. Just put in the disc in your drive and spend some time getting familiar with the environment. The biggest difference between Linux and UNIX is that UNIX isn't open-source and isn't freely distributable. I don't know how any employer could expect an employee to be familiar with their UNIX-based system right from the beginning, because they've always been configured to their own needs and no one else has the access to the system they are themselves using. At best you can only expected to be familiar with similar environments.

what about ifconfig.

Is that a unix thing or a mac thing. I have run into a few differences, but that might just be mac because they like to rename everything in case microsoft forms a monopoly on words.