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What's Unix?
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2009-05-22, 01:49 AM
I've heard people refer to this Operating System often. Local bookstore has an entire section dedicated to it, I've heard pServer Devs talk about Unix-Compatibility...
What's so special about it? D:  
2009-05-22, 02:15 AM
Hazzy Wrote:ohwait, Unix and Linux are different? Linux is Unix, but Unix isn't always Linux 
2009-05-22, 02:16 AM
Actually, Linux is free and Open Source. UNIX is a commercial product, though exactly whose I can't be bothered to go look up now... possibly AT&T.
It's an operating system. It's the stuff that starts up on your computer and lets it do fun things like browse the Internets or play games... or render movies or serve out web sites. Ya got yer Windows, yer MacOS, yer Linux, and other fun things like BSD. The best thing about UNIX is its stability. We're talking "reboot maybe once a year when it's time to change a hard drive or clean the dust out of the box" stable. For really nice rigs, you wouldn't even need to power it off to do either of those.  I'm not trying to type out a 1000-word essay right now, though. Google or Wikipedia should be able to hook you up. 
2009-05-22, 03:27 AM
Actually, Unix refers to a family of operating systems, which includes Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and others. What they have in common is an API that means programs compiled for one of them should compile and run the same on the others. If someone refers to a single operating system as Unix, they probably mean one of the BSDs.
2009-05-22, 03:57 AM
Spaz Wrote:Actually, Unix refers to a family of operating systems, which includes Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and others. What they have in common is an API that means programs compiled for one of them should compile and run the same on the others. If someone refers to a single operating system as Unix, they probably mean one of the BSDs. I think I just switched the words Linux and Unix in my head, since they look similar. xP  
2009-05-22, 12:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 2009-05-22, 12:53 PM by xLeviathan.)
Unix is a system architecture.
All the others under it like Linux, Free BSD, etc are just Unix-like, with modifications to the UNIX system. However, Solaris, Mac OS X, and some others actually use the UNIX system to a larger degree than their "Unix-like" counterparts. Heidi Wrote:As far as I know, it's actually a coincidence that rearranging the last 4 letters of linux gives unix Okay, I'm stupid. A friend very "nicely" pointed out to me that I was wrong. Linux was made by a guy called Linus Torvalds. (I knew that) Instead of calling it "Linus", he called it "Linux" because of exactly this reason. |
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