...Rhyme
The author wishes to remain anonymous. It was posted to the mailing list by Matt Welsh.

...simple.
There are some people who do call it that, but that's just because they have never read this manual, poor things.

...systems
SunOS, and some distributions at least

...version.
Yup, that's the reason all right. I should know, it's my system...

...headers

If you're short of disk space, deleting everything but the headers can save a couple of megabytes.

...all-right
These is called the power on self test, or POST for short.

...bootactv
I don't know much about any of the alternatives. If and when I learn, I will add more descriptions.

...rows
Incidentally, this is the mode preferred by Linus himself.

...platters,
The platters are made of a hard substance, e.g., aluminium, which gives the hard disk its name.

...BIOS
The BIOS is some built-in software stored on ROM chips. It takes care, among other things, of the initial stages of booting.

...track
The numbers are completely imaginary.

...primary
Illogical?

...magic.
For more information, see the kernel source or the Kernel Hackers' Guide.

...umount(8)
It should of course be unmount(8) , but the n mysteriously disappeared in the 70's, and hasn't been seen since. Please return it to Bell Labs, NJ, if you find it.

...everyone.
It requires several seconds of hard thinking on the users' behalf.

...disk.
Sic transit discus mundi.

...GB.
A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, pretty soon we start talking about real memory.

...disk
Except a RAM disk, for obvious reasons.

Ross Biro
Mon May 22 09:14:56 PDT 1995