The reader is assumed to be proficient in general computer use with an operating system whose primary means of interaction with the user is through a graphical user interface (GUI), such as Microsoft® Windows® or Mac OS® X. No previous experience with UNIX® or Linux is assumed.[1]
For the discussion in Chapter 6, Programming tools, the reader is assumed to be familiar with programming and with standard programming tools, such as compilers and debuggers.
[1] A historical note: as described in Randal Bryant and David O'Hallaron's Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2003), the Unix operating system was first developed at Bell Laboratories from 1969 through 1974 (14). The GNU Project[19] (GNU is short for GNU's Not Unix) was established in 1984 with the "goal of developing a complete Unix-like system whose source code is unencumbered by restrictions on how it can be modified or distributed" (5) - that is, made of free software. Linux was created from the combination of GNU software with the Linux kernel, a "Unix-like operating system kernel" first developed in the early 1990s under the direction of Linus Torvalds, who at the time was a graduate student at the University of Helsinki (18).