Unix VS. Linux

A co-worker was a bit curious and aked me a question I couldn't answer.I'm a Mac user at home with a G5 and he is a Windows user (used to be a Mac user but he said he saw "The Light" and is now a dedicated PC user). He asked if the latest Mac OS (OS X) was Linux based or Unix based. I told him it was Unix based. The he asked what was the difference between Unix and Linux. I have no idea, so I thought I'd asks the question here. What is the difference between Unix and Linux?

Legally speaking the difference between Linux and UNIX is that Linux doesn´t have rights to UNIX trademark. Linux was written from scratch to become a free UNIX-like OS.

OS X is based on Mach kernel and FreeBSD user space (there is also some code from NetBSD and OpenBSD). User space means the programs that make a UNIX system tick but are not part of the kernel. The graphics engine and GUI are closed source and written by Apple.

Like Linux, the BSDs don't have rights to UNIX trademark, but their roots are far deeper in UNIX history. Technically OS X is based on UNIX. Legally - I'm not sure. Last time I checked, Open Group that holds the UNIX trademark was suing Apple for saying OS X is based on UNIX.

kjellquist said:

http://linuxnewbies.editthispage.com/introduction

Click to expand...

IMHO that isn't very accurate article.

"The command-driven nature of UNIX and Linux make it more similar to DOS than to the newer, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) found on most computers today."
Linux and DOS have very little in common. Strictly speaking Linux has no user interface at all. It is a kernel (core of operating system). Operating systems built on Linux kernel can have many different graphical and/or command-driven user interfaces. Most of them are also available on UNIX or even OS X.

Legalites and copyrights aside, Mac OS X is based on UNIX. Mac OS X is not the first time Apple has tried to
pair the power of UNIX with the ease of Apple. There was A/UX almost a decade ago. So it is clear to see that OS X has been in the works for quite some time now.

I know this post is old but i just want to clarify something
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->>> When Steve Jobs was not working for apple in the 90s he wrote the first versions of Darwin - which is the Unix based kernel that Mac OS X uses - he also experimented with a new GUI (now the aqua interface for OS X). When Apple hired him as the CEO he immediatly starting working to make the next release of MAC OS based on darwin. A while later OS X (10.0) was released.
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>

For that matter, I seriously doubt Steve Jobs wrote any code for Darwin/OS X himself. Rather, it was written by people who worked at NeXT, the company he started after he left Apple in the 80s (which Apple eventually bought out.) He's a good businessman, and may have come up with some ideas/concepts, but he doesn't seem to be much of a programmer/engineer.

UNIX is old, probably dates to late 60s eh?

Linux is unix's daughter.

a few / commands are cross holdable.

they are both very similar with stability, but theres prolly areason apple went with unix over linux...

Unix is like the complete base of everything Unix Based - You CAN'T get anything that is more basic that Unix Linux is an expanded kernel of Unix---- and Yes two people at Bell Labs in the 60s wrote Unix (kind of by mastake)

boohya.

see i know what im talking about.

oke, 'm very intrested in this things.

why exactly did apple choose unix and not linux?
then, they could easier compile the linux programms.

my guess is they didn't want to deal with the open source linux, and other apps out there... rather start from scratch but not totally (to much work), a low use powerful OS over the medium use powerful OS..

I'm guessing because Linux is very agressively open-source. Whilst it's possible to write a proprietary OS using Linux (Lycoris, Lindows etc) they probably just didn't want the GPL licensing headaches or all the bitching that would've come from the fanatics when it came to selling it (With BSD, you can do what the heck you like with it, other than claim you wrote it)

OS X goes back to NeXT, which Steve Jobs started after he left Apple. NeXT made really cool jet-black cube-shaped (where have I heard that before?) computers, and they ran a Unix-based OS called NeXTSTEP. These systems came out back in the late '80s, and never really sold that well.

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

Linux, IIRC, was not written until 1991, and didn't become popular until much later. Since Linux didn't exist back then, NeXT used BSD Unix as a basis for its OS. When Apple bought out NeXT, it stuck with that decision in creating OS X.

I've heard some pretty passionate BSD vs. Linux arguments...they remind me of Mac vs. Windows arguments.

Yes and even IF Linux was out then, Steve would want to make something that was more basic then Linux and more stable... Trust me I run SuSE 9.1 on My old P3 and while it's great and completly fun to use, it isn't a OS that i would want to write a 30 page essay on the meaning of life and then have the kernel freeze up - losing all my data... what i am trying to say is that... wait hold on i will start from the beggining.
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The year is 1990 - Linus Torvalds is working(playing) with his computer in a his small bed room/dorm In Helsinki University, Helsinki, Finland. He is operating on an OS called "MINIX" (a horrible OS for the i386 platform that was basicly the only alternative OS to Windows)... he needs to get some info from the Helsinki University server. So he uses his modem and absent-mindedly he Dials back into his own computer resulting in the Hard Drive being completly formated. Sadly or Happily you could say a few months earlier he tossed the install disks for Minix in frusturation. >this is where the legacy begins< He starts writing a base kernel so he can use his computer again... Years pass and he starts showing it off to geeks just like him... almost over night the obsession with Linux was born. After meeting with many computer Lords including Steve Jobbs, Torvalds went and worked(and still is) at Trasmetta - a company very secretive about what they do.
- As for Linux, Linux Basicly belongs to the community Different companies will make different "flavors" or "distrobutions" of Linux to fit peoples needs, but one thing they all have in common is there kernel is always still the same...LINUX.
Toravalds still obviously plays with and contributes to Linux on his own time. He really is a great guy... He distributes his E-mail freely among everyone - and if you e-mail him (as long as it's not Spam) he will probably e-mail you back.
> Oh and for the record - LINUX IS FREE
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> Torvalds Made all his money(which is not THAT moch compared to Steve and Bill) because a Linux Distro called Red Hat offered customers to obtain the Distro for free, but gave the option of Support for a price... To pay respect to Torvalds the company offer Him some free stock(that he couldn't sell for 6 months ) and guess what Red Hat Skyrocketed the week they went public. Torvalds now lives in The Silicon Valley with his wife and 2 or 3 kids. I think they plan to move to Portland, Oregon.
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-NOTE: THIS INFORMATION MAY BE A BIT INCORRECT I DON'T HAVE MY "JUST FOR FUN" BOOK ON ME
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the following are some cool Linux sites...
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http://linuxiso.org/ - a site offering hundreds of mirrors for downloading Linux, and also has popular forums.
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-http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/ - Linus' website rather small and not updated much, but hey... he's Linus
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-http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bo...066620732&itm=1 - one of THE best book i ever read (Just For Fun) -- it's about Torvalds' making Linux
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Lol that took forever to write^^^

Ok, here's a bit of history of Unix.

First of all, Unix is not a product. It used to be a product from Bell Labs, but now it's just a trademark. Bell Labs sold the source code and trademark separately, so the term Unix lost its meaning as a product. That's why there is a lot of confusion about Linux vs BSD vs Unix as for what's what and what's better.

For all practical purposes, Linux, BSD, and Unix are basically the same. They don't share the source code, but they achive the same goal. Think of Safari and Camino. They are both web browsers, used for the same purpose as browsing web. But they are different products with different set of features.

It's hard to say which one is better than the others. It's highly subjective, and really depends on what YOU are looking for. BSD has longer history, and Linux has larger base. They are both pretty good, and much better than MS Windows.

Traditionally, BSD camp has a lot more commercial products compared to Linux which still remains to be the choice of hackers. It probably has to do with the licensing, where any products based on GPL licensed product has to be GPL licensed. Which means if Mac OS X was based on Linux, OS X has to be GPL licensed and source code to be available to public. That would not be in the best interest of Apple.

Linux IS NOT only for i386 it is for the following archetectures i386, i586, i686, PPC, Sparc, and Alpha. the following are for mac
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Yellow dog Linux
Debian
Rock Linux
Gentoo
Mandrake Linux
and Net BSD(which is not Linux)

Actually it's perfectly possible to write a closed-source GUI for a GPL operating system, just like there are lots of closed-source drivers (NVidia) and games (meh, various) IIRC, large chunks of Lindows and similar commercial distributions are closed-source.

Just as long as you don't use any GPL libraries in your code, or you only use LGPL stuff, it's fine.

However, Apple may have either believed the very common misconception that everything written for Linux has to be GPL (I doubt it, Apple would look into it a lot more deeply than that) or simply they didn't want to be hassled by all the people who *do* believe that and/or they wanted to save time by using some of the OS libraries, which you can quite happily do with BSD.

Had they built on top of Linux they probably would've had to use GUI wrappers for CLI tools a lot, and anyone who's played with Linux much knows how easily they break.

Oh, and I read Torvalds' book, it was one of the most interesting books I'd read for a long time

Cloudane said:

Actually it's perfectly possible to write a closed-source GUI for a GPL operating system, just like there are lots of closed-source drivers (NVidia) and games (meh, various) IIRC, large chunks of Lindows and similar commercial distributions are closed-source.

Click to expand...

You are making a huge simplification by calling OS X a GUI on top of OS. Apple would need to make various modifications in kernel, device driver, and other numerous GPL licensed codes in order to provide support for Apple hardware, thus OS X has to be GPL. OS X is not something like KDE or Gnome.