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Original post by Drew_Benton But Unix/Linux is cheaper than windows.

Linux? Sure. Unix from one of the major vendors? Nope.

This should explain a lot.

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Original post by Arild Fines Linux? Sure. Unix from one of the major vendors? Nope.

Um...

MacOS X: $129
Windows XP Home: $199

Solaris: Free for noncommercial use, Sun hardware includes license, $99 for an upgrade license
MacOS X Server: $999 for unlimited user license
Windows 2003 Server (5 client): $999

And for x86, Linux is pretty much as good as any of the other commercial UNIXes.

[Edited by - igni ferroque on December 17, 2004 12:22:00 AM]

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Unix doesn't really have more tools than Windows

If you were to compare the contents of the standard binary directories of a fresh Linux installation to a fresh Windows installation, trust me, Windows would pale by comparison. Apparently you've not done much looking around on a linux box.

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You can do the same thing on my Windows box and it'll still work but do it on most others and it won't.

No, most windows boxes don't have vi. They don't need vi. They have Notepad. What's your point?

If anything, windows boxes are *more* universal than Linux boxes. However, they have less. Linux boxes are more often susceptible to customization than Windows boxes, so you might not find what you expect. On my box, you won't find vi. You won't find emacs. You won't find pico. You'll find nano. It's not *that* universal.

Your average windows box shows up with perhaps one or two languages in esoteric places.

Used to be just like VBA in microsoft word. Now I assume that there's a C# compiler hidden away someplace.

On *nixes, your shells are programming languages. No editor is worth it's salt if it can't syntax highlight a couple languages. There are usually several dozen installed.

Your average unix box can't live without shell scripting, C, awk, sed, and usually perl as well. Linux definately has perl, and python as well. Bash scripts rock. I have a blog system I chained together with a couple of bash scripts. (and pyblosxom. I have an unusual situation that needed hacking around...)

Then theres the fact that all the parts of the system have their source code sitting around. For most people, that's a rarely used feature, but it's absolutely indispensable when it is used.

Unix is a trademark that can be applied to an operating system if it meets the requirements of The Open Group, who own the trademark. A Unix will necessarily be POSIX compliant, because one of the requirements of The Open Group is that it conform to the Unix specification, which is a superset of the POSIX specification.

Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel. Linux is not POSIX compliant, because POSIX says nothing about how kernels should behave, or even that kernels need to exist.

The operating system that is built around Linux is properly termed GNU/Linux. The GNU tools are almost POSIX compliant.

Unix is sometimes used to refer to operating systems that conform, or very nearly conform, to the Unix specification, but which don't have a license to use the trademark. An obvious example is GNU/Linux. To be clear, use the 'word' *nix in this case -- GNU/Linux is a *nix.

By itself, GNU/Linux isn't much good. What makes a good GNU/Linux is a good distribution. I use Gentoo, and the power of Gentoo is that I can install any package in the Gentoo package database with a single instruction.

I find it is generally easier to install programs in Gentoo than in Windows. To install Neverwinter Nights, for example, I only have to type emerge nwn. To play it, I then type nwn (or select it from the menu).

Pretty much any tool you'd like to use on Linux has a Windows version or something very similiar to it. Thus Linux doesn't have more tools than Windows. The toolset that comes in the box is pretty much irrelevant since you're probably going to install additional tools anyway. Heck Suse 9.1 personal doesn't even come with make out of the box and make is pretty much required to do anything on Linux.

Maybe vi was a bad example. The point was that the toolset is more standardized in Linux than in Windows so your favorite tool is more likely to already be installed on a random box. The standardization is informal since it's basically a concequence of distributing apps in source form that needs to be built but nevertheless it's there. It's probably also a result of Windows being more GUI oriented so you don't need to know as much about how to run the various subtools manually.

I'm sorry, while linux environments are common, I will never call them standard. I've seen systems that didn't even use bash - they were 100% tcsh systems. Give me a break!

(edit) A person's desktop linux system (which is a very different beasty from a server, which are EXPECTED to be standard) is guaranteed to be different in some fundamental way. Trust me.

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Original post by Mayrel ...the power of Gentoo is that I can install any package in the Gentoo package database with a single instruction.

You're saying that the power of an operating system lies in the ability to install applications easily? Or am I reading way to much into this statement (taking it out of context, because you really mean "the power of Gentoo as a *nix")?

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by Mayrel ...the power of Gentoo is that I can install any package in the Gentoo package database with a single instruction. You're saying that the power of an operating system lies in the ability to install applications easily?

Add to that the fact that what he describes is actually quite common: apt-get, urpmi (IIRC), etc.