Linux Vs Unix

[shwetha]

Hi,

i wanted to know the features of unix and linux.

Linux is more user friendly,but i wanted to know how linux is different from unix(features).

please reply at the earliest.

Thanking you,
shwetha

[Wertigon]

Uhm...

This one is a tough one to answer.

First off, what UNIX are we talking about here? There are two "main" flavors, BSD, and System V. System V is what AT&T developed, nurtured and sold to people. BSD is the UNIX that came from Berkeley University.

I've personally only had experience with BSD and Linux, so I'm most probably not the one you should be asking about this, but as far as I can tell, GNU/Linux has grown together to what it is now while *BSD and other UNIXes are designed to what they are. Or to put it another way, GNU/Linux has been put together with no specific plan in mind while BSD/System V have always have had guidelines and stuff.

There isn't much difference on a user-level - Generally there are the same apps that works in almost the same way. But there are quite a bit of difference between BSD and Linux beneath the surface, the biggest being that BSD programs are compiled from scratch using an ingenious invention known as ports. In the Linux world you usually have binary packages for everything (there are exceptions, but usually you have binaries).

Anyhow, there are a few more differences like that, but in the end it's more a matter of taste and preference than anything else. Hope that clears it up.

[MattyMoose]

If you've never used either *NIX or *NUX, I'd suggest you download a copy of VMWare (trial edition, etc), as well as an ISO of the latest RedHat (Fedora, I think) and Latest FreeBSD (5.2.1). Install them both, compare, play around, rm -rf / and so on.

There's no point in asking people which is better, or what the differences are, since someone (like me) might say that RPM sucks, and therefore you should'n't use RedHat, but FreeBSD instead, whereas someone else might say RPM is the best, and the ports system is horrible.

The best way to find out is to do it yourself. With a VMWare machine, you don't "risk" losing any of your current install base, and you can play around as much as you like and get a feel for the differences.

-MM

[martin]

You can see this comparison for example:

[over-yonder.net...]

but keep in mind that you make the choice. The differences are not that big for the end user.

[daisho]

How do you mean Linux is more user friendly? Basically throw yourself in and try a few distros.

Linux was make to be just like Unix but on cheep(er) x86 hardware as a school project. Though it has obviously grown from there :)

Many of the things you do on Linux are the same on Solaris and AIX or HP-UX etc. Then again many things are different.

Even between AIX, Solaris and HP-UX (which are all UNIX) there are differences.

Daisho.

[VectorJ]

I find Linux to be more friendly in a GUI environment, like if you're using it for a workstation, and FreeBSD to be better when I spend all my time on the command-line, like on a server. My personal preference is for FreeBSD, but that's probably because I started out using it and am more comfortable with it. Frankly, I think the differences, for a person just getting into *nix, are pretty negligible. I'd go with whichever one your friends are using so at least you have someone to talk to about it.