Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I have heard of Unix over the years, but can someone give me a brief and coherent desription of what the hell it is?

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Its like a big boil on your butt that never goes away.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

thanks - slighlty wiser :erm:

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Wait until you try and use it - then you'll know what i mean.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I was toying with the idea of putting it on a spare machine - linux that is. If that is, in fact, the same thing - but was wondering if it was worth the effort.
I had some kind of unix acount once with something to do with pico (I think) and managed to type a bit of text somewhere or something.....hang on, I'll get my coat

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

:google: is your friend.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

We used to use them at Uni running Linux for prograaming in C.
My personal memories are that it was a nightmare.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I love Unix so you can all take a jump. :p:

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

or better yet
rm -rf ~/*

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Nah, even better would be the infamous "rm -Rf /".

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Which sums up the case against Linux (in its present form) quite nicely.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

:LOL:

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Not really ... no.

Unix has it's place and in many ways is far more flexible than windows. It just takes some understanding and knowledge to use it efficiently.

Windows constantly "holds your hand" which can become cumbersome and restrictive.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

If you want to try linux i would suggest using a live cd version.


This way no changes are made to your current windows set up as the os boots entirley from cd.

search google for slax..

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Whereas Unix dosent even try to hint... If it had an animated paperclip it would probably say - What you looking at! You want help - search the web fool! :D

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

You could always try "man" :D

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Here come the pedant police: Linux is a Unix clone, not strictly a Unix version :D

If you want to try Unix at home you can go for a BSD distribution, e.g.

FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD

Or Sun have just open sourced Solaris.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Unix, the Mr T of the OS world.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Mac OS X is also built on Unix ;)

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I hate unix! WE had it had uni what a pile of pants!

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Well ... if you were trying to wear it ....

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Unix is glorified DOS and much harder to use.

Unix engineers think thye are gods when in reality they are cardiganised sandal wearing beard toting folkies........usually :D
You'll find many of them supporting the campaign for real ale and buying Vin Garbutt CD's.

Well thats how it is where I work anyway.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Since 90% of my working day is spent in Unix, surprisingly enough I am quite happy with it.

Basically its an operating system with no safety net. there is no 'are you sure Y/N' pop ups once you hit enter its going to happen. Not for any one with a little knowledge.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I'll agree that the CLI is harder to learn than DOS (mainly because there are so many more commands compared to DOS' 11 or so) but on the other hand it is far more powerful. These days though, desktops environments like GNOME and KDE have made some giant leaps in usability (as well as looking nice, I'll post a screenshot when I get home).

BTW, Unix came first and MS was once a Unix licensee. link

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I'm aware of the facts, I was just being tongue in cheek about it :)

As one that cannot figure linux out, I have avoided unix like the plague. But I still stand by my generalisations lol.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

The TCP/IP stack in Windows is based on BSD, that's why you have etc/hosts in Windows instead of registry settings.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Only if you're root, otherwise you have to sudo it ;)

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Heh, I think that people who complain that Linux is too user-unfriendly for them will have an even tougher time with BSD :D

I think that Sun's decision to open source Solaris was an extremely brave one to take, and also a highly commendable one. I really hope it pays off for them having taken such a risk. Although I've yet to use Solaris on an x86 box, I've only used it on SPARC machines. Anyone here tried it on an Intel box?

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Yep, I've got NetBSD running on my laptop (486 sx50 :D) and it's been a pain to configure.

Not yet, but I will do once I get more HD space.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

I am a Unix Engineer, and I can assure you that I am clean chaven, and cardigan free.. :knock: :p:
I only wear sandals when I am on the beach...... :dig:

However I do agree that Unix is less easy to use as an end user, and although Linux has come a long way, it is still not as user friendly , nor does it support as many devices or applications as windows.

Personally, I use Linux or Solaris (Unix) on my laptop, and have a windows PC at home that I use exclusively for gaming... I will be putting linux on the second hard drive of tht PC, but as my wife is not a techie, (and CS:Source is not yet available for linux), I will be leaving the primary drive as Windows with Linux as the secondary boot option.

pretty much all of my posting is done on my laptop running Linux, with Firefox, over a wireless link - so for surfing and business use it is fine (although StarOffice apparantly takes a little getting used to if you are an MS Office user - I have been on openoffice/staroffice for years and rarely use/used MS Office)
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I hope so too - I work for SUN :angel:

Solaris 10 on my Tosh laptop is pretty quick - and with the decision to opensource it, I expect it to get better as more drivers are written by the Open Source community.

I used to be a Solaris X86 Support engineer, and was gutted when they axed it - Hindsight is 20/20, but I believe it cost us a lot of goodwill and time in the now expanding X86 market.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Or if you want a look at the core of Mac OSX: Darwin

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Just put suse on my new desktop, but now perhaps wishing I'd put on solaris, as I use and older version of that at work....

Whats it like on a PC? I assume it doesn't use CDE as that isn't OpenSource, is it? likewise X11 and stuff...

Any chance of a couple of screen shots?

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

depending on the verison of solaris, you will either get CDE (older versions) or Gnome (newer Versions).

X11 is there - Solaris is not an "Open Source" Product yet, it is SUNs software that we choose to not charge for ;)

I run it on a laptop, and it is pretty good...

You can get Nvidia drivers and things like FireFox and Thunderbird Pre-compiled for Solaris as well.

you can download Solaris 10 for free from : http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp

HTH
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Even once the Full open Source project is complete, there will still be a "commercial" version of solaris, based on the Opensource, but with additional software that we cannot opensource for whatever reason (mainly T/P stuff that we are not allowed to release), and that will still be free to download.

The current way of looking at it is that Solaris is free, if you want support, then you have to pay for it.

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Well I have just got a tadpole uSparc laptop running Solaris, cant figure why i did it?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

Re: Unix - what the hell is it?
 

Nice - I run Solaris 10 on a toshiba lappy - does well for work, not quite up to a decent linux distro for a home PC yet though..