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LINUX, UNIX...what's the difference ?

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by pandadude 1 view

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I've recently been telneting to a public access unix system (PAUS) to learn UNIX, my purpose is to learn about the working enviornment of UNIX and shell progming, NOT admin. At least not yet. But the host is actually running LINUX....there isn't onesingle reference to this fact on their website, they just call their system UNIX...so my question is: should I care ?
Does this make difference to what I'm pursuing ?
Thanks

7 replies

by marshallkeithusa

For the most part the answer is no it does not make a lot of difference. Linux is based on Unix as far as shells go bash is the most popular but there are several to choose from.

The biggest thing you will notice is where stuff is located. . .but then it is different between different linux distrobutions. I thing you will learn more by getting a linux distro and loading it on your own machine as there are things you can't do without root access.

by some guy in seattle

UNIX was developed out of an AT&T program written by some guys that were proficient on a mainframe called MULTICS (MULTICS - UNICS, get it?). Just for fun, other companies jumped on the bandwagon with their own versions of UNIX, which is why we nowHPUX, AIX, and others.

Linus Torvalds wrote Linux from the ground up to be an operating system that emulates the feel of UNIX while having none of the code. Since you are interested in learning about the working environment Linux is no more confusing to learn UNIX on than any other UNIX system, since they are all similar but slightly different. If you get into programming that might be an entirely different matter since the underlying code is different. However, I wouldn't know since thatsince I am not a programmer. Maybe someone else can fill this in. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Hope that helps,

by schannachie

Hi,

As you can see reading these to previous answers, they are right. But you have to now somethig more about this world. the Unix trade mark is property of the AT&T labs, they certify that the code is a unix. You can find this when you read the manuals of the diferent vendors.
You will find some diferences between the diferent unix, such as commands that are property of IBM's AIX such as lsdev, or some like diferent flags for the same command. But as you will see if you have a programm coded in C / C++ you can run it on all the unix world only recompliling the source. In case of purcasing, you have freeware unix (linux, solaris, freebsd, etc) ... and the price is about 200 $ mostly (AIX, HPUX, Ultrix, irix, etc).

Good luck !

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