What is unix?

[Martin]

I feel dumb for asking this, but what exactly is unix?

[Homer_simpson]

i dunno much about unix but i know that it is an OS very powerful(unhackable) and most of the powerful servers run on unix...

[Asok]

umm.. Unix is hackable just like any other OS.

[Blade]

yeah unix is hackable.. but its not nearly as easy as any other system. it was built for servers of any kind, therefore making it very stable. but it is not meant to be a workstation, thats where linux, windows nt/2000 pro/xp pro comes in.

[Catalyst]

it was not originally built for servers

[Blade]

what i read was it was originaly built to control different things like big time security systems... but its now more universal and more commonly heard of being used for servers.. i dunno what i read could've been wrong

[Catalyst]

i dont think your wrong but it wasnt originally designed for servers since it did begin in the 60's

[Blade]

Blade wrote:

what i read was it was originaly built to control different things like big time security systems... but its now more universal and more commonly heard of being used for servers.. i dunno what i read could've been wrong

i know it wasnt originally built for servers... thats not really what i meant, i was only trying to imply its now commonly used for servers

[octopi]

Unix, is well... It really depends, I don't know what the exact definition is, but I define it as, an operating system that manages disks like this

code:

/ /usr /usr/bin/perl

In windows it would be like:

code:

C:\ C:\perl\ C:\perl\bin\perl

All unix versions use /'s instead of C:'s to access the hard disks.
Another thing thats not posible in windows is having your
/ only have 50mb
but having your
/usr have 800mb

(have more space in a directory then is in the directory above it. (if you want.))

Unix's also come with apache, perl, telnet, and other things right from the get go. (Most atleast.) Unix is really aimed towards the developer, more the the end user. Its a good operating system for web development and to use as a webserver.

Unix's are considered to be more stable, and handle errors, better then mac's and windows.

They are also considered to be more secure, but it really depends on who's using it, and how secure they make it. You can get some pretty secure windows machines, with little effort.

Unix's used to all be like dos, where you used commands to do what you want, but nowadays (with the linux, aimed at the end user) you can get graphical user interfaces to it, like KDE. But these make the system less stable.


btw:

code:

su-2.05b# uptime 12:25AM  up 24 days,  1:28, 2 users, load averages: 0.03, 0.05, 0.02

As of right now, my unix (FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE) machine has been up for over three weeks

[Homer_simpson]

that aint true i've seen unix looking like windows and u dont have to type anything...(like dos)

[Blade]

octopi wrote:

Unix's used to all be like dos, where you used commands to do what you want, but nowadays (with the linux, aimed at the end user) you can get graphical user interfaces to it, like KDE. But these make the system less stable.

dude, you gotta read what the man is saying... he said there are GUI's to handle unix based systems... hence KDE

[Homer_simpson]

oops...
sorry thought u said something else...

[naoki]

i hear it's hell to set up linux, but you've got a wicked comp capable of doing many things afterwards

and since linux is an improved version of unix you should really look there for understanding

[Asok]

dual booting between win XP and redhat linux was fairly easy for me to set up.

[Blade]

i had duel boot between madrake linux 8.0 and win xp before too.. and it wasn't very hard...