Unix seminars

These Unix seminars were originally created by Alex Batko to help newcomers to the School of Computer Science (SOCS) at McGill University overcome the great hurdle of learning to use UNIX-like systems. Over the years, students were presented with SunOS, Solaris, NeXT, FreeBSD, and numerous GNU/Linux varients, notably Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, and Gentoo. A dozen two-hour seminars were given per term, giving students considerable opportunities to learn the ropes.

The name "Unix", in the seminar title, was spelled with only the first letter capitalized to make a distinction from the original "UNIX". The seminars, which are still taught at SOCS, cover beginner, intermediate, and advanced Unix user concepts and commands.

Unix seminar notes

The following documents, originally written in 1999, and updated over the years (most recently in 2003), are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Here is an additional document about a few basic Systems Administration tools.

Seminar notes spin-offs

These seminar notes are still (2007) the basis of Unix Seminars at SOCS (formerly located here). The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University customized these notes (see here). As well, these notes have been used to craft the first few lectures of a course called GNU/Linux System Administration, taught at McGill University's Center for Continuing Studies.