This may be of interest.

[Jon Pruente]

On 4/8/07, Oren Beck <orenbeck at gmail.com> wrote:
> A good reading as to the Zen of Linux is this:
>
> http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
>
> which is a slightly wandering tome on the divergences between
> Operating Systems and the  why/how those came to be.
>
> HtH
>
> Oren


I'd gotten that in paper back back when it came out.  For those not
int he know, Stephenson is coming from a history of Mac OS when
writing the book, so he got to skip a lot of CLI life under DOS.  I
kinda thought it was an epiphany type book where he suddenly realized
what kind of power lies underneath the pretty skin.  Basically, he
wrote if a few years too early and missed out on making the book about
OS X.  However, even as much of a fan of OS X I am, I think that might
still be a good thing.

Jon.
(Mac mini w/ OS X.4.9 and a P4 w/ Ubuntu 7.04 beta, so I see it from both sides)