Why scientists should know Unix

Of course this practically means Linux or OS X these days. But why? I think there are several good reasons. First, understanding how to make things happen in a command line driven environment gives an insight into how a computer actually works. If you understand how to go from source code to compiled executable it gives you some notion of what is really going on under the hood. Second, flavors of Unix explicitly deal with security and permissions in a way that Windows doesn’t (or at least in a way that I can understand). Thus understanding how to change ownership and/or the permission status of a file practically makes you a more secure computer user. Third, there is a lot of free opensource software out there in the Unix world, both explicitly scientific (think octave or genesis) but also office oriented (open office for example). Finally, your chances of getting infected by a virus or worm is greatly reduced, since the folks who write these malevolent programs are writing them to the masses (read Windows machines).