Unix distros...?

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NickN

Gawd
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This semester I'm going to be taking a "The Unix Operating System" class. I just got my textbook today and I've been thumbing through it, and there's no mention of distros anywhere. I know enough about Linux to know that there are a multitude of different distros. Does the same apply to Unix?

I'm trying to get prepared for the class early because I know NOTHING about Unix and very little about Linux, so I'd like to get myself set up with a Unix install right now that I can play around on and gain some familiarity before I plunge into the class. Should I wait and see what the professor says regarding distros? Or do they all operate pretty much the same? What are some popular Unix distros?

Thanks very much! :)
 
Sun occasionally gives away copies of their OS for free. I scored an x86 and SPARC version of Solaris 10 last February for free. I'd be willing to bet that you'd receive one, or be told how to get a copy, on the first day of the class.

In my experience, Unix is Unix. However, there are differences between the different flavors. Things like using 'prstat' instead of 'top' in Solaris - per Sun support. It don't hurt to know things between the different ones, though. It seems that even in companies that focus on Sun, there's still HP UX machines hiding somewhere in Engineering that will eventually need to be supported. :)
 
Any Linux, BSD, or OpenSolaris based OS will provide you with enough Unixy userland tools to give you a head start.
 
Nothing to add, since these guys seem to have it covered, but....I just wonder how many Linux/Unix pedants saw this thread title and took a moment to warm up for a "Linux is NOT Unix" flaming session? :D
 
The old commercial/proprietary Unixes never really had separate distributions (other than possibly being compiled for different hardware configurations) - there was never a need, a single vendor provided all the software for every part of the system (usually derived from another Unix). It's more like how Net/Free/OpenBSD (or even Windows) works.

Linux, OTOH, is -just- the OS kernel. In order to produce a usable system, you need to cobble together all the separate parts & integrate them yourself. Differing opinions on which components to use & how to organize everything (along with a touch of NIH syndrome) lead to the plethora of distros we have now.

The plus is that, while there several core differences between distros, the vast majority of what you're going to learn in an "intro to Unix" is going to be applicable across any Linux/Unix.
 
I've found that when a lot of schools say Unix they really mean GNU/Linux...guess they never bother to learn they are different...

Anyway if you want a true Unix you can download Solaris for free from their site. If you go to opensolaris.org you can download the "opensolaris community edition" or "solaris express" (whatever they call it now) which is Solaris 11 and more up to date.
 
GNU is Not Unix! :p

EDIT - For the sake of our OP, GNU actually stands for "GNU is Not Unix." Kind of a recursive acronym. :)
 
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In the Unix class I had a few years ago, we just telnetted into a Solaris box. Any Unix derivative should work fine, as all you're likely to be using is the terminal (think command line).
 
Hey thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate it :)

Electrofreak said:
GNU is Not Unix! :p

EDIT - For the sake of our OP, GNU actually stands for "GNU is Not Unix." Kind of a recursive acronym. :)
Click to expand...

So the G in GNU stands for GNU...? This is making my head hurt. :confused:
 
As others have mentioned, UNIX has a far deeper and more complicated history than Linux does. Remember that Linux and UNIX share essentially nothing at the kernel level, even though they are extremely similar and often inter-operable. Here's a big fun chart from wikipedia that shows the UNIX family tree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.en.svg

Here's the basic rundown: there are two main lineages. One is the BSD fork, which spawned all of the modern "free" UNIX variants, like FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. BSD 4.3 is the de facto node where most modern systems are derived. Then there is the System III/System V fork, which gave rise to almost all of the closed-source UNIX distros, such as HP UX, AIX, and Solaris.

EDIT: I should clarify that, even on the same fork, different UNIX versions are not "distros" in the same sense that Linux distros are. Linux distros are just different "arragements" of the same software, typically with some unique type of package manager. The Linux kernel is the same (just with a different configuration and maybe a few custom patches) between all the distros and the pieces are roughly interchangeable. UNIX versions, on the other hand, are all different operating systems. An AIX kernel is substantially different from an HP UX kernel or a FreeBSD kernel. They are separate code bases altogether. However, they all meet the UNIX and POSIX standards so they are roughly compatible at the program level. Programs can be ported extremely easily between them even though they are different operating systems.
 
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Eva_Unit_0.

Good explanation! Linux distros are really collections of software+package managers with a (mostly) common kernel.

FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD IMHO seem to have a lot more differences between them than linux distros do.

I'm working on an OpenSolaris project at work and it is waaaaaaaaay different than everything I've used in the past. You really need to relearn everything from filesystems (zfs vs ext3 vs ufs) to startup to device management (nightmare in solaris -- the general partitioning command is called "format" but it doesn't necessarily format a partition) :)
 
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