For questions about words/terms that are specific to Unix and/or Linux.
Questions tagged [terminology]
179 questions
34
votes
1 answer
What is the significance of "tab" e.g. in "crontab" or "inittab"?
What does the "tab" mean in "crontab" or "inittab"?
Having some idea of its meaning might help to mentally categorise files which contain the "tab" suffix and understand their relationship with the other parts of an OS.
the_velour_fog
- 12,270
27
votes
3 answers
How to say 'UN*X or *nix' in conversation or reading aloud?
Should it be 'star nix' or 'nix' or 'unix-like' or something totally different?
Pierre B
- 2,213
11
votes
4 answers
Disambiguating the word "command" in Linux
The word command refers to two different concepts in Linux:
An executable program, such as grep (or a shell built-in, such as cd). Example usage: "Here are the top 10 Linux commands you should learn."
A full text string sent to the shell for…
DanB
- 486
6
votes
3 answers
Terminology: Clarification of the words network 'link', 'device', 'interface'
Cut to the chase: So which is it? Is an IP assigned to an interface, link, or device? What distinguishes these three things? Caveat: This is a critical review of the iproute2 utilities or documentation thereof, to gain a better understanding of them…
Jonathan Komar
- 6,424
- 7
- 35
- 53
4
votes
3 answers
Official Description UNC (Universal Naming Convention)
Can anybody point to a man page or specification that defines the Universal Naming Convention (UNC)? I'm looking for the original source of the idea
3
votes
2 answers
Definition of sane
Does sane have a technical definition in a unix / linux context?
I mean in situations such as this:
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
jsj
- 1,410
2
votes
1 answer
How is the ability to do something on the fly and the ability to make that same thing permanent referred to in Unix / Linux?
I can think of many examples of this...
You can use the ip/if* commands to set your network interface in the here and now, but you can edit a file like /etc/network/interfaces to make the changes permanent.
You can set a bash environment variable…
leeand00
- 4,615
1
vote
1 answer
Is IFS a shell-builtin, an Environment variable, or something else, by definition?
In Bourne shell and derivates,
Is IFS a shell-builtin, an Environment variable, or something else, by definition?
(How is this program module normally categorized in the literature?)
humbleasker
- 11
- 1
1
vote
1 answer
What does port mean in context of a shell in unix?
From the book Advanced Programming in the Unix environment:
Linux uses the Bourne-again shell for its default shell. In
fact,/bin/sh is a link to /bin/bash.The default user shell in FreeBSD
and Mac OS X is the TENEX C shell, but they use the…
Geek
- 6,688
1
vote
3 answers
Why FreeBsd is using man word for various functions?
I wonder why FreeBsd love to use man in various places, for example:
FreeBsd Man Pages - This interface will allow you to browse through 10,500+ Unix related topics
Even in that page description, it says:
This interface will allow you to browse…
Newbie In FreeBsd
0
votes
2 answers
Do we have 2 types of "Shells" in Unix?
As a Linux newcomer that really wants to understand Linux rather than just work with it automatically, I understand that the term "Shell" basically describes a software layer which is above the kernel that includes services that can run and be…
user149572
0
votes
1 answer
Some terminology about CLI
Is there any difference in meaning between the following terms? Can they be used interchangeably?
terminal
console
shell
command line interface
If any, what are the differences?
sawa
- 872
-1
votes
1 answer
What are Unix and Linux? And how do I tell which I'm using?
I get the feeling from other posts on the subject that this might be a delicate topic for hardcore Linux/Unix users, so apologies for any issues there, I'm honestly completely ignorant...
I only recently started using Linux (or maybe it's Unix, I…
jonnybolton16
- 217
-1
votes
1 answer
What kind of times exist beside of runtime ?
I first encountered the expression "runtime" when s.o. told my that in Linux files ending in .ko are able to be loaded into the kernel at runtime to increase its functionality when needed.
So, runtime is, in my layman's understanding during the…
Abdul Al Hazred
- 26,630