Question

THE C-SHELL:

1. Find three reasons online for why some computer users prefer to use the Linux operating system instead of Windows. List the reasons you find and for each one write if you think this is a good reason, and why or why not. Afterwards, explain why you personally would or would not consider switching your personal computer platform to Linux from your current one. (If you already use Linux, explain why you made this choice.)
2. Investigate some of the C shell variables as follows:
   1. Print out a screenshot that shows the difference between having the noclobber variable set and not. To do this, set noclobber and try to use the cat command to put text in a file that already exists. Then, unset noclobber and do the same thing.
   2. Print out screenshot(s) that show the result of setting the prompt to different values as indicated. Remember that you can change the prompt to include the result of a UNIX command if you include the command name in backquotes. To get credit for each step, you must have the screenshot show the command you used to set the prompt and that it worked as intended.
      1. Set the prompt to the UNIX server’s name and an arrow by using the hostname command. Hint: try set prompt="`hostname`-> " as your command.
      2. Set the prompt to be the computer’s processor type, followed by a colon and a space. You can retrieve the processor type using the mach command.
      3. Set the prompt to your username, a hyphen, and the current command number. Your username can be retrieved using the whoami command. The current command number can be included using the code \! in the prompt string. Remember to enclose everything in double-quotes.
      4. Set the prompt to show the current working directory, but show that when you change the directory, the prompt is not updated to show the new location.
      5. Reset the prompt to its original gator% value.

Answer 1

1: Linux costs less. free :

Because Microsoft ended support for Windows XP and is forcing Windows 7 users to “upgrade” to Windows 10, Windows users face not only the “impending doom” of the Windows XP and Windows 7, but also the cost of replacing their previous version of MS Office with newer versions that cost about $500 – or paying a monthly fee from here to eternity.

>>Let’s say, you buy a new computer every couple of years. By this point, you have been through the ringer of MS DOS, Windows 95, 98, ME, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 and many versions of Office. Each time Windows destroys your computer, you pay several hundred dollars for an upgrade that often works worse than the version you could no longer use because it was “no longer supported.” Folks are starting to add up the cost of all of these new versions. In most cases, it comes to more than $200 per year just for software! If you have a family and several computers, or a small business with computers, the cost quickly exceeds $1,000 per year.

Microsoft typically sells $90 billion in software every year – and makes more than $20 billion in profit every year! But instead of passing along some of these savings to their customers, Microsoft is now increasing prices in a very hidden way by moving to a “software as a service” (SAAS) model whereby you only rent their software for a month or a year at a time instead of buying it. Ironically, for all the money we are sinking into these over-priced products, we are getting a product that is worse than an open source option we can get for free

2: Linux is much safer than Windows :

The reason computer security is becoming more important is that every year the number of hacker attacks keeps increasing. The reason Linux dominates the commercial server market is because servers are constantly being attacked and security is the Number One issue. Because this subject is so important, we have devoted an entire section to explaining why Linux is so much more secure than Windows.

3: Linux is more dependable than Windows :

The reason Windows 10 is so unstable is that, since the introduction of Windows 8, Microsoft has been trying to combine a “Metro” Operating System with a traditional “Windows 7” desktop Operating System. These are fundamentally incompatible objectives, as incompatible as trying to combine water with oil. The result is that the Windows operating system ends up not work well for either mobile or desktop usage.

The Windows Metro underlying programming is so different from the Windows 7 desktop structure that Windows has been plagued with a series of technical crashes right from the initial public launch of Windows 8. What Microsoft has done is create a Jekyll and Hyde combination of two separate operating systems. They then try to hide this fact with one log in screen.

An obvious sign that Windows 10 is actually two different operating systems is that you can have either the Metro screen or the Desktop screen active – but you cannot have both! With Windows 8, when you first log in, you were forced to visit the Metro Mobile Operating System screen. Windows 10 now allows you to go directly to the desktop screen. But all it is really doing is allowing you to choose the desktop operating screen when you first boot up your computer. The Windows Metro Mess is still there. It is just hiding in the background. Despite being able to log into the Windows 7 screen instead of the Windows 8 screen, the instability problems have continued with Windows 10.

Another visible sign that Windows is using two different operating systems is that Windows 8 and 10 both have two different control panels. They try to hide this fact by calling the new Metro control panel Settings.

When Microsoft first introduced the second control panel, they tried to reassure users that this was only temporary – that future versions of Windows would go back to a single control panel. But Windows is so badly designed and badly coded that Microsoft has been forced to admit that the two control panels are here to stay. These dual operating system problems are in addition to the ongoing technical problems with viruses and crashes that have plagued all past versions of Microsoft Windows

Meanwhile, Linux Mint does not suffer from any of these technical problems. There is only one control panel. So it is easy to understand where you make changes in your Linux system. You will therefore be able to get your work done without worrying about your computer crashing and losing all of your data.