I'd like to interject for a moment...

These textbooks are trash and written by morons. When I was in college one of the required books said very clearly that sleep and hibernate are exactly the same thing. It said that both suspended to RAM and hibernate was just some lower power version of sleep. It was even a question on an exam that I got wrong for some reason. I argued with the professor about it and proved to him thats not the case by taking one of the lab computers, hibernating it, physically taking the ram out and swapping it with another computer and resuming into the same state on power on. He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”
It really highlights that there are probably a lot of other inaccuracies that I didn’t notice. This is the standard of education nowadays.
- He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”
  The mark of a great teacher. It's nice however that he had the patience to wait for your experiment (or maybe he was expecting it to fail miserably?): no prof of mine would have went along with something like that (not to mention, I'm pretty sure we couldn't take apart the lab PCs at our leisure).
  
  The mark of a great teacher.
  Perhaps not great, but effective. This attitude is exactly how working in the corporate world works. Reality and being right are rarely, if ever, the important thing. Following the rules, doing what you're told, and sitting the fuck down and shutting the fuck up? That's what this teacher was teaching their students.
- I went to college early 2000s. The textbook said something along the lines of "The fastest RAM is 100 MHz".
  DDR was still relatively new then. I took a clipping of an ad showing higher speeds, and he literally claimed I faked the printed ad ...
  
  Missed opportunity to amend and reprint the textbook every time a faster RAM was launched and force all the students to buy the new edition.
- what kind of prof is that?
  
  In my country, the vast majority.
  Here professors are so underpaid, that anyone with an IQ above 75 is doing something else.
- That's messed up. When this kind of thing happened when I was in school the instructor would mark both answers as correct since the book did state it. I highly appreciated that.
- most CS "textbooks" are a scam these days I'm general. a huge red flag when I scan resumes now is actually if they have a textbook published without some sort of advanced degree or qualification to write a textbook. I get resumes of people a year out of college, work a junior position, and have a "Advanced JavaScript" or "JavaScript the not boring way" or "Complete guide to typescript" or some other quirky textbook name. if you actually click into any of these books, they're complete nonsense written by somebody who just copied another textbook from another idiot who knew nothing. all these people are over confident resume padders. in practice they don't know shit and didn't legitimately write a lick of the book. I've had some of these applicants claim their books are used by professors too.

Has anybody mentioned yet that tar isn't even a "compression format"?
- Well, neither is iso...
- Isn't that like common knowledge or something?
- It says archive not compression.
  
  Table 9.7 Compression Formats

Fun fact: G in GNU also stands for GNU.
- GNU Is Not Unix Is Not Unix is not Unix
- Nice entry point to recursion :)

If someone send this to Stallman, he'll write a stern email on emacs to the book's author reminding them that gnu is not linux.
- GNL
- They'll argue with Stallman about what GNU is.
- Well yeah, it's a Linux variant!

Gentlemen, a short view back to the past. Thirty years ago, Niki Lauda told us ‘take a monkey, place him into the chair and he is able to use the computer.’ Thirty years later, Sebastian told us ‘I had to start my computer like an F1 car, it’s very complicated.’ And Nico Rosberg said that during the compile – I don’t remember what compile – he pressed the wrong button on the keyboard. Question for you both: is Linux today too complicated with twenty and more buttons on the keyboard , are you too much under effort, under pressure? What are your wishes for the future concerning the technical programme during the development? Less buttons, more? Or less and more communication with Torvalds?
- Could you repeat the question?
  
  🎶 🎵 You're not the boss of me now! 🎵🎶
  
  We are checking.
- As a huge Formula 1 fan and daily Linux user for a few decades now, while also being quite stoned.. this fusion broke my brain, haha, well written. I could hear the words in the voice of Lauda, Seb, and Rossberg.
  Pastor Maldonado I would assume is a windows user.
  
  Ukyo Katayama was a Xenix user then
  
  can you explain for a casual scroller-by with a less-than-mild interest in both?

Here's some more excerpts from the book that I found amusing:
As you learned in Chapter 1, Linux is an open source operating system, meaning that anyone can download and modify it. Open source operating systems can benefit from improvements contributed by thousands of programmers. Some people choose open source operating systems out of an anti-establishment spirit; others choose them as a practical matter because they are free.
"Anti-establishment" isn't the word I'd use, but I guess that fits.
One of the most popular distros for casual users, Ubuntu, comes with a DE called Unity (shown in Figure 5-16)
That hasn't been true since 2017.
Be suspicious of free apps. In the best-case scenario, the app does what it says but installs ads or other software. In the worst-case scenario, the free app is, or contains, malware that might steal personal information from your device, encrypt your data files and demand a ransom for decryption, or monitor your device usage. Installing an app sometimes asks for specific permissions that the app will use. Be selective in allowing app privileges to items such as contact lists, GPS location, e-mail messages, and so on.
Okay, I'll admit this is good advice if we're talking about "freeware", but there's also free/libre/open-source software, which has all of the benefits of freeware, and also gives you the freedom to read/mofify/share the source code, if you wish.
As for that "malware" you speak of, you might as well be describing Google Chrome.
No media player supports all formats, so it's important to find one that supports the formats of the clips you want to play.
Clearly, these people haven't heard of VLC.
Codec is short for "compressor-decompressor"
It actually stands for "coder/decoder".
And that's just one page...
- Paid apps can also steal user data and also I'd be way way more concerned about 'free' mobile apps than open source programs.
  Mobile apps can and will get a jarring amount of your data just for being installed.
- The "best-case scenario" is adware or malware. Someone didn't get hugged as a child.

GNU's Not... Linux
- At this point RMS should seriously consider changing the name to GNL.
  
  Might as well make it ANL since the first letter is arbitrary 😹
- Damn it, it's now GNL and we have to rewrite all the textbooks!
- Nice.

CompTIA is a scam. No job that's worth a shit will require it.
- Not disagreeing about it being a scam but the government uses Sec+ as an IAT level 2 requirement. Helps meet some contract requirements.
  
  have you... seen the state of IT and technology in general in the government? I mean actually that explains a lot.
- not entirely. It makes it easy to filter out the kind of applicants that would put that on their resume. Very useful for hiring managers. Saves lots of time.

Missed opportunity to talk about tar being a tape format that we just happen to use on disks too (so it's accessed linearly, and in fact if you cat two tar files together they make a valid tar file.. or you can create a multi volume tar file that'll prompt you to change the tape).
- I had no idea. Thank you

GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix

id like to interject for a moment. what your referring to as gnu, is actually linux/gnu, or as ive taken to calling it, linux + gnu

In an alternate universe the sentence reads 'GNU is not UNIX' and leaves it at that.

I think you'll find that's GNU/Zip, or as I've taken to calling it GNU plus Zip.

This whole table raises multiple questions. I guess I'll never hire someone mentioning comptia on their cv
- Failing to mention that JAR is just a ZIP file with special contents and calling tar a compression format sure is a bit incompetent for a textbook.
  
  Am I blind or do they call tar an archive format and not a compression format as you say?

I mean, it's technically correct? The G does stand for GNU, and GNU tools can be used to build Linux. It is indeed worded very badly.
- No, that's a big confusion.
  I hate the RMS rant about how you're supposed to say "GNU/Linux", but here we're talking about a GNU package that can be used without Linux. It's on FreeBSD and even macOS.
  
  It just goes to show how important it is to come up with a good name. Recursive acronyms are clever and all, but if no one likes saying it they aren't going to. T
- No basically all Linux uses gnu Coreurils as a foundation and is therefore best called gnu+Linux. There’s a great RMS rant about this , it’s what the title is referring to.
  
  Aren't their embedded systems that run the Linux kernel without the core-utils (maybe with busybox instead) and would therefore be non-gnu linux variants?
  
  They should make a new version of Linux From Scratch where all you get is the Linux kernel source code and you write the compiler and core utils yourself. Now that would be Linux.
  
  And the next time RMS invent Linux, he can call it whatever he wants.
- GNU is the name of the operating system. GNU packages like glibc and gcc can be used for an operating system. Gzip is a GNU package.

So much to unpack here.
GNU is not a Linux variant. It is a set of programs and shared libraries.
ISO 9660 has nothing to do with compression. Just calling it ISO isn't a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
tar is an archive tool. It has no compression.
Why no mention of compression algorithms algorithms vs archive tools?
Why not have different compression algorithms and their tradeoffs?
ETA: jar files are just zip files for Java libs/programs. You can open them with zip file tools.
- Just calling it ISO isn’t a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
  This is the only thing here I disagree with. The table is quite clearly putting extensions on the left and intro classes do not need to know about the International Organization for Standardization.
- That line implying 7zip and 7z are different formats has just been pulled out of the air too
- There actually is a compression format that used .jar as an extension, a would-be successor to .arj. It’s quite archaic though, and God help you if you find one in the wild at this point.
  http://www.arjsoftware.com/jar.htm
- GNU is not a set of programs or libraries, it's an operating system.
  GNU packages is what you are referring to. But GNU itself is the name of the OS.
  
  It was intended to be an OS and is if you use the Hurd kernel. In practice, Hurd isn't really used, so it is just a bunch of programs and libraries. I guess it can go either way.

High probability it is not fixed. This is the typical level of CompTIA quality I’ve encountered.

This is great.

Nobody gives .arj any love anymore. It's even current. 🤷
- Arrrrrrrj matey

This sent me into full-body convulsions. How could you do this to me

Man. I remember taking the CompTIA exams back in the day.

It's CompTIA. They're meh, at best.

Guhnooguhnooguhnooguhnooguhnooguhnooguhnooguhnoo

This is why I never bothered formally learning anything computer-related in school.
- When I was a young 'un we learnt a lot of this basic stuff just by being interested in computers and using them. These formats are so ubiquitous that anyone who hasn't come across them must have pretty limited experience using computers. So I guess this textbook is for people who want a job in IT but aren't motivated enough to actually use computers? Seems like a bad formula for a career.

Sorry CompTIa is fucking garbage. In all my years at faangs, startups, Silicon Valley ycombinators, mid west tech, have I ever hired or worked with someone who has comptia certs.
Is it a good start to level 1 help desk at a hospital? Maybe. But I feel like it’s a fucking scheme where the time to learn any language instead would make you leagues better. Or study and get Cisco certs instead for neteng.
I’ll add it’s not that I chose not to hire CompTIa cert people. But I think in my 15 years I have never seen one come across the desk. The only time I saw it on a resume was level 1 help desk at a shop that thought Windows ME was the best release at the time and should be used in all rural hospitals and it was 2006 and anything beyond it was full of bloatware.
His company went bankrupt. Fuck you Arco

@TheImpressiveX I’m still confused about GNU/ Linux thing.
- The whole concept of claiming that GNU is the actual OS never made much sense to me. Like yeah, glibc and coreutils are very major components, but so is the init system, and the package manager, and the WM, and the DE... I don't really understand why RMS draws the line at GNU arbitrarily other than to stroke his own ego. Following his underlying logic, shouldn't I call my system Plasma/KWin/pacman/systemd/GNU/Linux?
  None of this is directed at you btw, it's just something that always springs to mind for me whenever this topic comes up.
  
  @Neil Thank you. I hope that I can remember this.
  @TheImpressiveX
- I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
  Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
  There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
  
  Literally please stop posting this copypasta. I know you "linux" users only have like 4 jokes but this is just outdated and also false.

When I had to learn Novell NetWare the textbook we received was just as bad and the instructor didn't have a clue either. Because internet wasn't exactly widely available for information like this then, we wrote a DOS batch file that discarded our input and miniced the output of the client for the practical exam. We all passed.

Well, GNU is a Linux based OS. Is they would write „GNU is a LINUX/GNU variant“ it would confuse more than it would teach.
- Well, GNU is a Linux based OS.
  Not exactly. GNU/Linux is an OS using the Linux kernel and the GNU Software Suite. But GNU can also be its own OS on its own if you use Hurd.
  
  There also used to be Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, pretty sure there have been GNU/NetBSD variants in the past as well
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
  
  What is GNU?
  GNU is an operating system that is free software—that is, it respects users' freedom. The GNU operating system consists of GNU packages (programs specifically released by the GNU Project) as well as free software released by third parties. The development of GNU made it possible to use a computer without software that would trample your freedom.
  Directly from the official GNU website : https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html
  And btw an OS is more than a kernel, the kernel is „just“ the foundation on witch the OS works. Hardware communication is on kernel level, for example.
- Gnu is a dream, a thundering Hurd of dreams