Most of us think that Linux was created as a response to Windows which is the most popular operating system nowadays, but it is actually a response to UNIX.
UNIX is a very old operating system that was intended to operate on large computers and mainframes. It is not cheap or easy to use, that is why only a very few people use it. Linux, which is developed by Linus Thorvaldsen, is based on the UNIX system but does away with the complex mechanisms that make learning UNIX very steep.
UNIX is a very old operating system that was intended to operate on large computers and mainframes. It is not cheap or easy to use, that is why only a very few people use it. Linux, which is developed by Linus Thorvaldsen, is based on the UNIX system but does away with the complex mechanisms that make learning UNIX very steep.
Being the predecessor of most of the operating systems that is being used today, UNIX has existed for a very long time and has changed very little since it was created as a processing machine and very little processing power was used towards better interfaces and ease of use improvements. Linux was built with the common user in mind , therefore most Linux distributions provide users with a very capable GUI that also eats up a portion of the computer’s processing power. Owing to Linux’s flexibility, the GUI can be removed for server applications that don’t need fancy GUIs.
It was developed to maximize the productivity of high end computers that are used by big companies, and all of the releases for UNIX are built with the latest high end hardware in mind and it is not usable in the common desktop computer. Linux, on the other hand, can scale reliably across different hardware platforms making it a good choice for most people. Unix requires a more powerful hardware configuration. It will work in large mainframe computers but will not work in an x86 based personal computer. Linux however, (which is built on the concept of Unix) has small hardware requirements and it will work on both a large mainframe computer and an x86 based personal computer. Unix is an Operating System developed in olden days in which the kernel, the heart of the OS, interacts directly with the hardware. Because UNIX treats everything as a file, it provides greater security for users. An example of a UNIX distribution is posiX. POSIX is a set of standards for interoperability of applications between UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Linux uses a the UNIX architecture as its basis and provides more facilities and applications. Linux could be considered to be a GUI to the UNIX core.
EXAMPLES OF LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS
Examples of Linux distributions are Redhat, Fedora, Susee, Mandriva, and Ubuntu. Solaris OS also uses the UNIX kernal almost all UNIX commands will work on solaris in addition to 500 Solaris specific commands. Solaris is also a rewrite of UNIX for x86, and does not use any original UNIX code. Both UNIX and LINUX are Open source. But UNIX is proprietary, Linux is open source)
Unix is the foundation for a number of operating systems, with Linux being the most popular one. Novell and Free BSD are 2 other commonly used Unix variants.
DO YOU KNOW?
UNIX is an operating system created in the early days of computers. More recently, Linux was created as an open-source, freeware operating system. Linux is free software, not freeware. Free software is open source that insists any developer reusing code releases their own work as free software. Freeware is proprietary software distributed at no cost [gratis]. It is”UNIX-LIKE”, meaning that it uses many UNIX constructs but also departs from traditional UNIX in many ways. Like UNIX, Linux is faster than many of the other commercially available operating systems. This is a sweeping generalization and depends on the hardware used, and what servers and applications are running, It appears to also be far more robust than any of the Microsoft products. Linux is being used in many time critical applications because of it’s speed. It is also used in many applications that need to maintain uptime because Linux, like UNIX, can run for months at a time without rebooting. While the typical method of solving Microsoft problems is to ”reboot”, that particular requirement does not seem to be appropriate in a Linux/Unix environment. While UNIX has created a windows-like work environment, Linux has improved greatly on that concept. Linux has become a real player in the consumer operating system market… and it’s free. While you may want to pay for a Linux distribution, the actual code is free and you are allowed to load it on as many machines as you want. You can get Linux for free if you wish to load it across the internet.
