Operating Systems – UNIX vs. LINUX

The following is a quick post on the differences between UNIX and LINUX. I hope you find this useful as many people are confused by these concepts.

Unix is a multitasking, multiuser operating system created by AT&T. UNIX is one of the most used server operating system and is almost entirely written in the C programming language. Linux is a UNIX like operating system. But is not derived from UNIX source code. Linux is created as an open source project. Openvms is an operating system developed by DEC. It stands for Virtual memory system. It is known as a robust and stable operating system. However, people joke that the uptime of Windows is measured in days, of UNIX in months, but of OpenVMS systems in years. OS/400 was founded in 1988 and is IBM specific. It is known to be very complete with communications, transaction processing, system security and a relational database manager.

Going a little deeper, I will like to talk to you guys about the differences between Unix and Linux. One of the major differences is that Linux is free where most Unix is not. Linux is based on Unix as mentioned, but does not carry much similar code. Linux can be considered as the “kenel” as it is the core of systems. One can also consider it the backbone of a computer. It won’t allow a user to browse the internet, or chat with people as it does not have a GUI. That capability is brought to us by applications that are written for these operating systems. Linux essentially allows you just to store information on RAM or hard disk and lets you connect to a network. It is essentially free because of is open source nature. Why would you buy something when someone else could develop it for you? I think this is one of the features that makes Linux a popular choice to most people.