Thread: DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UNIX & LINUX

Hi frds!!


Will you help me to find out the difference between the unix and linux environment??

linux is operating system kernel whereas unix is certification for operating system

To put it very generically, Linux is an operating system kernel, and UNIX is a certification for operating systems. The UNIX standard evolved from the original Unix system developed at Bell Labs. After Unix System V, it ceased to be developed as a single operating system, and was instead developed by various competing companies, such as Solaris (from Sun Microsystems), AIX (from IBM), HP-UX (from Hewlett-Packard), and IRIX (from Silicon Graphics). UNIX is a specification for baseline interoperability between these systems, even though there are many major architectural differences between them. Linux has never been certified as being a version of UNIX, so it is described as being "Unix-like." A comprehensive list of differences between Linux and "UNIX" isn't possible, because there are several completely different "UNIX" systems.

1.UNIX is CUI ( Character User Interface ) Whereas Linux is GUI ( Graphical User Interface ).
2.The kernel is the core of any operating system in unix or linux ,but the source code is not freely available for any of the commercial versions of UNIX but for linux the source code is freely available.
3.Most commercial version of UNIX supports two, or possibly three, different local filesystem types. Linux, however, supports almost all of the filesystems that are currently available on any operating system.
4.Unix systems are bound to have static links of new modules to be added or recently added. Linux differs here too, it supports new additions on the fly. For example, drivers can be loaded dynamically whenever they are needed. This feature is recognized as Loadable kernel Modules hence it adds flexibility to linux.

Linux is a computer O.S. which is a free and open source software. Although many different varieties of Linux exist, all are Unix-like and based on the Linux kernel, which is an operating system kernel.

UNIX is an open source system, as such anyone can use it's components. The systems you've listed, as Nacho says, are UNIX-based variants, as is Mac OS-X. One of the reasons there's so many of these is that the base-system is open-source.