Linux·4,539 discussions

What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

Locked

I work at a big well-known corporation where I noticed that people will say “Unix” when they’re actually talking about Linux. We don’t have any Unix servers but we do have a lot of Linux so I’m wondering why they do this, and it’s kind of annoying. Does anyone here do this? Why do people do that? I think that maybe it also goes against the GNU philosophy and that that acronym is basically saying don’t refer to Linux as Unix.

Topic

Apple is UNIX

In reply to What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

I have never heard of Linux being called other than “UNIX Like”

Not worth saying?

In reply to What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

Look up didactic or pedantic. It’s almost always an insult so best to move on to topics that really have meat to them.

Let them say what they want. If they use Linux, great. Move on.

Linux as Unix

In reply to What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

Yes, I don’t actually know whether Linux is Unix or not these days. The Unix trademark is currently owned by the Open Group, which says the term now applies to anything which can be certified to pass the Single Unix Spec (SUS). It no longer has anything to do with inheriting its code from ancient AT&T systems. And Linux and Gnu both generally try to follow SUS, as far as possible. (Which is a lot farther than it used to be, since the Open Group dropped certain Linux-hostile requirements from SUS.)

In any case, referring to Linux as Unix is something that folks on the Unix side should be complaining about, not the Linux folks. They’re the ones whose trademark is being violated by such loose talk.

In fact, the whole “GNU’s Not Unix” thing happened because AT&T threatened to sue people who abused their trademark (back when it was their trademark). It was the FSF’s way of thumbing their nose at AT&T.

What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

In reply to What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

You ought to get that:

Linux isn’t, rehash, isn’t, an OS. It is a part. A bit is a significant piece of an OS, however, it’s anything but a total OS.
What you allude to is all the more appropriately known as GNU/Linux.
GNU is a venture to deliver an open-source Unix clone, begun in 1984 by Richard Stallman.
Linux is an open-source Unix-like part project, begun in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. It became famous in light of the fact that it was authorized under GNU General Public License (GPL), in this way permitting anybody to utilize, alter, refresh and add to the first code.
Link: https://armen-edvard.tumblr.com/post/670802785053360128/the-complete-guide-for-linux-operating-system

Comparison between Linux and Unix

In reply to What do you think of people who refer to Linux as Unix

Lately, I have been hearing more and more people call Linux “Unix”. It is an understandable mistake. Many of the popular distributions are based on Unix or have Unix lineage in their genealogy. Ubuntu is based on Debian GNU/Linux which is a derivative of the Unix-like “The Debian Project”. The Fedora Linux distribution derives from another set of Linux distributions that started from a version of AT&T SVR4 Unix. The openSUSE Linux distribution is derived from SUSE Linux which also has roots in Unix and was started by the same people who created Caldera International (which later became SCO).

[Author]

Replies