The first question is usually "Why am I using UNIX as opposed to another operating system, such as DOS?", or "Why am I using UNIX instead of a mainframe or mini-computer?". This section provides an overview of the capabilities of the UNIX operating system, and why it is a preferred computing platform.
Traditionally, Unix/Linux/POSIX filenames can be almost any sequence of bytes, and their meaning is unassigned. The only real rules are that "/" is always the directory separator, and that filenames can't contain byte 0 (because this is the terminator). Although this is flexible, this creates many unnecessary problems. In particular, this lack of limitations makes it unnecessarily difficult to write correct programs (enabling many security flaws), makes it impossible to consistently and accurately display filenames, causes portability problems, and confuses users. more ....
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