Who Is This Book For?

This book was written with two kinds of readers in mind:

• Home users who want to set up a LAN server for their other computers, or for their friends and family to access over the Internet.

• IT professionals who are used to working with other operating systems and network services but want to learn more about Unix, either for personal growth or to help evaluate different technologies for the office.

In both cases, you've already gotten your feet wet as a Unix user (although we'll go through a quick overview in Chapter 1, "Unix Review") and want to know more.

What's in a Name?

In 1994, the then-current owner of the "Unix" technology sold the trademark and certification rights to the X/Open Consortium, which then merged with the OSF/1 group to form the Open Group.

The Open Group works to define open standards for Unix, such as the Single Unix Specification, which is similar to (but not the same as) the POSIX 1003 specifications.

Before that was a dark time when people were sued for daring to use the name Unix without paying for a license. That's why you'll see some old-timers refer to U*ix or *ix occasionally. Not only does this wild card "match" Unix-like operating systems (such as AIX, Ultrix, Xenix), but it also wards off the Unix trademark lawyers.

These days, being "Unix-like" is good enough for almost everybody.

If you want to know more about this, check out Wikipedia's excellent entry for Unix:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

You also need to be a little adventurous, because you'll be poking around in the unfamiliar guts of something new.