Unix and linux

[sofy60]

Unix and linux

Did these two operating systems meld together somehow ? You dont see much of unix anymore.

[Coding Monkey]

Nope. Never see much of UNIX anymore. Let me just get back to programming via VIM on OS X using Darwin ;)

[Rob Holmes]

Hi - this might help ;)

Here (http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/ateQuestionNResponse/0,289625,sid39_cid583148_tax296080,00.html)

Rob

[easyasit]

i must admit i have never seen it myself (linux that is)

but there are different versions of linux arn't there, Red had linux etc.
I downloaded the red hat version and needed three CDs to burn it to.

I also hear linux is of similar format to XP. Also more applications are starting to cater for it as well now.
If it goes on like this, may as well switch from microsoft to linux!

Al

[Mac Yeti]

I hate linux, in the days when I used to be a geek (was in a linux club and everything!), I got really involved with it, learnt all the relevant stuff, took my LPI's, persevered, gave up, found new determination and went back and persevered again. Then I just thought, it was never supposed to be this much of a pain was it?

Thats what it is. A pain. Until it works as good as my mac, I'll stay away from it :)

[BurntNjal]

I went off Linux at about the same time I spent a week trying to get it to recognise a plain, boring PS2 mouse. No OS should be that painful to use, even if it *is* free.

I'm much happier with my mac... all the useful bits of unix, with out the sobbing and violent outbursts :)

I am keeping a close eye on Haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org) though, BeOS was great.

[Enigma121]

Dearie me.

Sounds like some of you have had some bad vibes from Linux. There are some bad distro's out there and there are some very good ones. Try a copy of Fedora Core. The world will be a sweeter place for you.

Obviously (as mentioned previously) Unix and Linux are two different but very closely related things. One commercial and the other open source - and arguably a lot more flexible.

Unix still has a huge following, mostly on the back end business system (eg Database / Intranet server) part of the IT equation.

[seabro]

I never touched Unix but I got several linux servers in production, for Intranet / Email Servers / Web Proxy / SAMBA and a few Asterisk PBX's.

My own Linux server running on an old Celeron has probably been up for close to a year.

For me, linux has been very loyal.

[confused]

I also played with the penguin a while ago, had good results, ended up running a red hat box as a router/firewall which ran constantly for ages and ages, but that said, a decent windows box will do the same, I liked a few things about it, but since my job at the time, and now what I do myself is based on windows, I didnt/dont have the time/inclination. Newer distros are much better if you need/want/like a gui interface - if anyone has seen Vista betas, then at a glance the desktop looks very much like KDE

CALV

[refreshious]

Nope. Never see much of UNIX anymore. Let me just get back to programming via VIM on OS X using Darwin ;)

is that meant to be a good thing?

[Richard Conyard]

Unix and Linux are completely different systems. However Linux is a POSIX compliant OS with much the same command structure and outlook so has often been used as a free replacement.

Although I wouldn't count myself in any computing camp (Linux, Mac, Windows, Unix, SCO, SunOS etc.), I think you just have to use whatever is appropriate at the time. Linux has come on in leaps and bounds in usability, you just have to check out the latest releases of Fedora to see how nice it's become. I still wouldn't advocate it for desktop use though since for standard computer users it is still a little tough.

Our main use of Linux in-house is for NAS. It means we don't have to use up a server licence or CALs on file storage.

[Coding Monkey]

Linux opens up many more...opportunities (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml)

[KM-Tiger]

Unix and Linux are completely different systems. However Linux is a POSIX compliant OS with much the same command structure and outlook so has often been used as a free replacement.

Indeed. Unix is proprietary and must be paid for. If I've understood the story correctly, Linus Torvalds wrote Linux because he wanted to use Unix on his home PC (the same as he used in his work at University) but couldn't afford to pay for it.

I still wouldn't advocate it for desktop use though since for standard computer users it is still a little tough.
Tough for what? And what is a standard user?

I agree in general, though. Like a lot of small businesses we use Windows desktops as clients to Linux servers. Too much software we need to use will *only* work on Windows. But I'm just about to add our first GNU/Linux workstation. This particular user only needs a browser for access to databases and OpenOffice to view some documents. Why pay a licence for that?

Our main use of Linux in-house is for NAS. It means we don't have to use up a server licence or CALs on file storage.
Which leads to a cost-saving business idea. Why not use Linux (or a BSD) on all your servers and not pay any licence fees?

[Richard Conyard]

Tough for what? And what is a standard user?

It's not what they are used to. As for standard users I find most users don't really have an idea about how their computer works, panic if everything doesn't look exactly the same as what they've used before and can't be bothered to learn something new.

If I replaced out Admin dept with Linux there would be a riot. Open Office or KDE office is fine as a replacement for MS Office for what they do, it's not the software it's the (L)users.

From my point of view there is the maintenance aspect. We run an AD network with a central 2003 server and XP clients. Maintenance is minimal, to be honest the network now set-up pretty much runs itself and users can tidy up after themselves in most instances. Under Linux we would lose this flexibility and ease of maintenance. I cannot see Linux workstations requiring our average which would be 1 hour of support / maintenance a quarter per workstation.



Which leads to a cost-saving business idea. Why not use Linux (or a BSD) on all your servers and not pay any licence fees?

One big reason is because in the most part we develop solutions for MS platforms, this would be somewhat tricky to do under Linux.


The trick is to forget about Open Source, Free and Propriatary and to just use the appropriate tool for the job.