Linux Compared To UNIX

Carlwill · 2011-03-26 16:47:54

I've been a Linux administrator for almost 10 years and sadly I've never touched a UNIX shell beyond variant flavors of Linux. I find it hard enough to keep myself fresh on the differences between RHEL, Debian, or Arch Linux. I've been wanting to load a UNIX O.S. on VirtualBox but honestly I'm debating if there is any significance between running Linux on a server or running UNIX. Obviously a lot of older guys who have been on the I.T. gig for years started on some kind of UNIX (probably Solaris) but for them it worked at that time and I don't think Linux was what it is today in regards to security & performance. Can you guys tell me if there are any significant advantages of running UNIX over Linux or vice versa?

Thanks for any info.

ataraxia · 2011-03-26 16:58:39

Every UNIX is different. Some are nicer than others. Honestly, the easiest UNIX to get access to these days is Mac OS X, which was certified as "real UNIX" as of 10.5. If you look at that OS, and consider how odd it is in some ways, you'll get a good feeling for how useful/useless the "UNIX" brand name is.

Carlwill · 2011-03-26 17:01:34

Are there any free variants of UNIX? I know OpenSolaris is dead but I really hard so many amazing things about ZFS file system. I know Oracle Solaris isn't free but I just don't like OSX even if it has true UNIX variables associated with it under the hood. How would you rate Solaris if I can get a licenses copy of it? Is it worth learning?

ataraxia · 2011-03-26 17:04:39

Solaris is mostly dead, since Oracle bought Sun. I'd expect most users of it will be leaving.

Carlwill · 2011-03-26 17:12:16

I had no idea Sun Solaris was dead too. That's sad to hear.

gbrunoro · 2011-03-26 17:26:59

Well, any *BSD is a modern UNIX. I'd suggest you messing around with FreeBSD, it is the "official" descendant of BSD UNIX, but it can't be called UNIX for legal reasons.

Carlwill · 2011-03-26 17:37:31

So FreeBSD & OpenBSD are both modern releases of UNIX, correct?

**EDIT**

Just read the Wiki...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD

Last edited by Carlwill (2011-03-26 17:39:02)

rwd · 2011-03-26 19:15:19

It is hard to give advise without knowing what purpose this server you mention has. Just some personal project, for a specific corporate application or something else??

bohoomil · 2011-03-26 19:25:03

Free OpenSolaris fork: http://openindiana.org/

rowdog · 2011-03-26 21:11:46

Linux is teh besto!

I suppose that It depends on what you want to do but pretty much everyone is moving to Linux. Even the traditional vendors of UNIX generally have a version of Linux (e.g. IBM, Sun => Oracle => Unbreakable and SUSE). Heck, Linux even runs on mainframes and most of the worlds supercomputers... and that's not an accident.

FWIW, I used to admin on HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris ... I never did learn to love ksh + old school vi. At the end of the day, I was glad to get back home to my beloved bash + emacs.

hitest · 2011-03-26 23:01:21

I have the most experience with FreeBSD and have run that off and on since 5.x. Currently my router/firewall( a PIII 667 MHz IBM 300 PL) is running pfSense, a version of FreeBSD. FreeBSD is very robust; it runs light and fast on older hardware. The FreeBSD handbook is excellent and very similar to the Arch wiki in terms of depth and clarity.
If you want to try a Unix variant that is the one I would go with.
I like FreeBSD on my router, but, run Linux (Slackware, Arch) on my PCs.

Misfit138 · 2011-03-27 02:00:13

Yes, the *BSDs are genuine, modern UNIX variants, obviously descending from Berkeley. There are some advantages to them, imo; they are simpler and have tightly integrated base systems which are maintained within a single source repository.
For my own preference, I prefer GNU and Linux because I perceive most distros as slightly more automated in the areas I want it, especially package management. Going to *BSD from Arch 'feels' a bit more crude to me. YMMV.
I do like the BSDs, especially OpenBSD and NetBSD. They are high quality, and like Arch, offer excellent docs.

Gullible Jones · 2011-03-27 04:11:33

NetBSD is awesome, OpenBSD is awesome, FreeBSD is... kind of in turmoil I think. It feels like it's trying to be Linux and not succeeding.

The big issue with the BSDs is hardware support IMO. NetBSD runs faster and better than Linux on old machines, but support for newer desktop hardware is very spotty. ACPI on newer laptops seems to be mostly a lost cause.

BSD package management is very good. Notably nothing to search packages is installed by default on any major BSD flavor, but search utilities (and orphan removers, curses interfaces, etc.) are available in the repositories - for NetBSD you want pkgin, for OpenBSD IIRC it's pkg_mgr. There's automatic dependency resolution, a build system like ABS... It's not as friendly as Arch's system, but IMO it beats APT any day.

For drive mounting, FreeBSD has DevFS rules that might or might not work. Net and Open, AFAIK, do not support automatic mounting, but I believe they have static device filesystems, so using static mount points in fstab should be okay... With the caveat that the user doing the mounting has to own both the mount point and the device nodes.

Anthony Bentley · 2011-03-27 05:43:51

Gullible Jones wrote:

BSD package management is very good. Notably nothing to search packages is installed by default on any major BSD flavor, but search utilities (and orphan removers, curses interfaces, etc.) are available in the repositories - for NetBSD you want pkgin, for OpenBSD IIRC it's pkg_mgr.

OpenBSD does have searching available by default, but it’s awkward: “cd /usr/ports && make search name=netsurf”. The devs suggest sqlports instead.

Gullible Jones wrote:

For drive mounting, FreeBSD has DevFS rules that might or might not work. Net and Open, AFAIK, do not support automatic mounting…

OpenBSD has hotplugd(8). With that I was able to replace my sister’s Ubuntu with OpenBSD running GNOME. The only things she misses are Flash (which I got around with a Firefox extension) and a GUI for wireless configuration (unfortunately, pretty much a lost cause). As a plus, her laptop actually suspends and resumes properly now.

I’ve been using OpenBSD as a desktop for three years now. I think it’s nice. Very lightweight, a focus on correctness and security, and some interesting features. In particular, the man pages are excellent. Being on a non‐Linux platform has also taught me a lot about writing more portable code.

Carlwill wrote:

Are there any free variants of UNIX? I know OpenSolaris is dead but I really hard so many amazing things about ZFS file system.

I hear FreeBSD is a popular platform for running ZFS, but I’ve never tried it myself.

Last edited by Anthony Bentley (2011-03-27 05:49:33)

dolby · 2011-03-27 06:31:05

Anthony Bentley wrote:

OpenBSD has hotplugd(8). With that I was able to replace my sister’s Ubuntu with OpenBSD running GNOME. The only things she misses are Flash (which I got around with a Firefox extension) and a GUI for wireless configuration (unfortunately, pretty much a lost cause). As a plus, her laptop actually suspends and resumes properly now.

May i ask what does your sister uses her laptop for? (besides "browsing" the web)

Last edited by dolby (2011-03-27 06:31:47)

Anthony Bentley · 2011-03-27 06:38:43

dolby wrote:

Anthony Bentley wrote:
OpenBSD has hotplugd(8). With that I was able to replace my sister’s Ubuntu with OpenBSD running GNOME. The only things she misses are Flash (which I got around with a Firefox extension) and a GUI for wireless configuration (unfortunately, pretty much a lost cause). As a plus, her laptop actually suspends and resumes properly now.
May i ask what does your sister uses her laptop for? (besides "browsing" the web)

That’s exactly what she uses it for. Web browsing, music/video playing, GIMP… that’s about the sum of it.

Last edited by Anthony Bentley (2011-03-27 06:40:08)

dolby · 2011-03-27 06:55:40

Anthony Bentley wrote:

dolby wrote:
Anthony Bentley wrote:
OpenBSD has hotplugd(8). With that I was able to replace my sister’s Ubuntu with OpenBSD running GNOME. The only things she misses are Flash (which I got around with a Firefox extension) and a GUI for wireless configuration (unfortunately, pretty much a lost cause). As a plus, her laptop actually suspends and resumes properly now.
May i ask what does your sister uses her laptop for? (besides "browsing" the web)
That’s exactly what she uses it for. Web browsing, music/video playing, GIMP… that’s about the sum of it.

I thought Ubuntu was designed for people like your sister
Using OpenBSD for that purpose is more or less overkill IMO, since its not that easy to maintain.
Debian stable or Slackware (preffered since its a laptop) would also do just fine.

Anthony Bentley · 2011-03-27 16:18:36

dolby wrote:

Anthony Bentley wrote:
dolby wrote:
May i ask what does your sister uses her laptop for? (besides "browsing" the web)
That’s exactly what she uses it for. Web browsing, music/video playing, GIMP… that’s about the sum of it.
I thought Ubuntu was designed for people like your sister
Using OpenBSD for that purpose is more or less overkill IMO, since its not that easy to maintain.

It’s easier for me to maintain.

Among other things, when she used Ubuntu she had problems with sound dropping out or crackling, the laptop never waking up from suspend, and the graphics driver crashing on startup and throwing her back to a text console. None of these happened after installing OpenBSD.

I would have been happy to leave her with Ubuntu if it had been “easy to maintain,” but in reality it wasn’t.

Leonid.I · 2011-03-27 19:00:13

Anthony Bentley wrote:

It’s easier for me to maintain.
Among other things, when she used Ubuntu she had problems with sound dropping out or crackling, the laptop never waking up from suspend, and the graphics driver crashing on startup and throwing her back to a text console. None of these happened after installing OpenBSD.
I would have been happy to leave her with Ubuntu if it had been “easy to maintain,” but in reality it wasn’t.

This is cool. May I ask about the specs of that laptop?

sand_man · 2011-03-28 00:07:04

OpenSolaris might be dead but it's legacy lives on in OpenIndiana. http://openindiana.org/

ewaller · 2011-03-28 01:26:09

I was of the understanding that to be "UNIX" means compliance with the POSIX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ) standard. It was also my understanding that Linux is very POSIXish, but has never undergone any of the (expensive) certification process.

mhertz · 2011-03-28 09:12:40

Yes, UNIX, implies official certification from the Open Group(TM holder) based on compliance with the Single UNIX Specification i.e. POSIX, and the rest are unix-like, with either strong or full POSIX compliance, but just not officially UNIX certified, like you stated.

Btw, also note that UC Berkley's original BSD UNIX, was based on the AT&T codebase(original UNIX codebase), but the free BSD's has replaced each and single AT&T codeline with there own, so yes, BSDs are UNIX inheritants history-wise, but not code-wise, since else it couldn't be FOSS, as the AT&T codebase isn't free...

Last edited by mhertz (2011-03-28 09:33:20)

Korrode · 2011-03-28 10:14:24

Anthony Bentley wrote:

Among other things, when she used Ubuntu she had problems with sound dropping out or crackling, the laptop never waking up from suspend, and the graphics driver crashing on startup and throwing her back to a text console. None of these happened after installing OpenBSD.

That's not Linux's fault though, just Ubuntu's

Vermillion · 2011-03-28 11:02:54

Ubuntu seems to be one of the worst choices. I did also experience a lot of problems like very poor flash performance, a startup screen with a lot of display driver errors, sometimes the boot process took more than 5 minutes while the boot screen started flickering and you were hardly recognizing that it says "checking disk",....

However this should not be a "why Ubuntu is lame" thread. BTT: I recently tried pcBSD which derives from FreeBSD and feels very similar to Gentoo. If you don't go deep into system you probably never experience any large differences.
Largest difference for me IMHO was that there are no kernel updates like we are used to have in Linux. They are somehow like any other updates. Which is somehow really cool...

Last edited by Vermillion (2011-03-28 11:06:53)

ANOKNUSA · 2011-03-28 14:41:08

Vermillion wrote:

Largest difference for me IMHO was that there are no kernel updates like we are used to have in Linux. They are somehow like any other updates. Which is somehow really cool...

I cam across this article some time ago, while considering giving FreeBSD a try. The most interesting aspect is the difference in philosophy regarding Linux and *BSD development; I actually find the "organic" or "evolutionary" style of development appealing (mainly for the freedom and control that affords), while the *BSDs' devs tend to take pride in developing a very tightly integrated codebase. Aside from that, much of the workings of the BSD variants seem pretty familiar to anyone who's used Arch or Gentoo.

Arch Linux

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Linux Compared To UNIX

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