Comments on: Yeah, But It’s Real Unix

By: Michael Jensen

Michael Jensen — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:23:14 +0000

Real Unix == Anything descended from the AT&T Research UNIX releases

All of the real unixes (including the BSDs) are complete OSs, developed together as a cohesive whole. Linux is just a work-a-like kernel. How close Linux is to Unix is completely dependant on the distribution. Some distros e.g. SlackWare are pretty close Sys V UNIX, others like the Ubuntu (what I am currently using, as it my options at work where either Windows or Ubuntu) are quite a bit different to UNIX Unix.

There is actually quite a bit of Unix that has always been public domain software, and all of the Research editions have since been released under BSD like license(they didn’t used to be).

p.s. AIX is descended from AT&T System III UNIX and with amount of vendor gratuitous changes done towards the end of Sun and Oracle have continued to do to Solaris, it’s closer to the mythical pure UNIX now than Solaris is. It’s really too bad as Solaris used to be a be pretty decent and standard System V. (SunOS 4 is still better than either)

By: Amy Rose

Amy Rose — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:18:23 +0000

This sounds like elitism. But who really cares about it, in the grand scheme of things? I am happy with Kubuntu (but my opinion must not count because I’m not a CS or IT student; my major has nothing to do with computers).

By: Lonnie Olson

Lonnie Olson — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:06:36 +0000

“real Unix” just means it was derived from the official AT&T Unix.
Linux was not derived from this original source. It was
intended to imitate Unix on an x86 processor. Hence Linux is
a Unix imitation… not “real Unix”.

Now to the even more important question, is using a “real Unix”
operating system the most important reason to choose an OS?
Absolutely not! Each Unix derivative has it’s own pros and cons.
Just as Linux has it’s pros and cons. Those should all be
weighed together. “real Unix” is a snobs response, that’s all.

By: randomwalker

randomwalker — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:01:50 +0000

Real Unix is hard to use. That seems to be important to some people. I don’t know why.

By: muz

muz — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:24:32 +0000

My response: “freebsd? Is it an obscure version of linux?” haha

By: Oliver

Oliver — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:15:32 +0000

Wow – lot of nonsense, “Linux is real UNIX” etc. First UNIX is just a trademark and BSD was a patchset and later a system of it’s own (in the 70s). FreeBSD is a BSD fork, it’s an open-source derivative of original AT&T UNIX! Solaris or the former SunOS is a fork of BSD. *BSD is about quality and … Linux … ask Andrew Morton for example

http://wwww.lemis.com/bsdpaper.html

Read it, it’s no Linux kid, it’s a real UNIX developer since three decades, with code in NetBSD, Linux and FreeBSD.

By: Wilmer

Wilmer — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:59:11 +0000

Real Unices are a PITA to use and the people who use them want appreciation for their braveness. That’s all. These are also the people who say “People who love Unix use FreeBSD. People who hate Windows use Linux.” and similar bullshit. Apparently Linux is too famous and “mainstream” so they have to find something else, something more obscure.

By: Footsteps

Footsteps — Thu, 24 May 2007 12:40:07 +0000

Use AIX for a short time, then you’ll see. AIX ain’t UNIX is the battle cry of the heterogenous unix environment admin.

By: Gianni

Gianni — Thu, 24 May 2007 07:05:53 +0000

Basicly what they are saying is that Unix (BSD, AIX, …) are the new Linux.

Remember when using Linux was for nerds ? That’s old shit! Now you must use something else

I think that’s what we call progress.
Just my 2c.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:58:01 +0000

jldugger- You're absolutely correct. I have never done a migration from Unix to Linux, so I don't know what's involved or how difficult it would be. Knowing what was being run in that shop tells me that it would be difficult. That's why I suggested a slow migration. During the migration, things would be tested along the way, making sure that nothing was broken, and that everything worked well. However, my experience with Unix has been decent. I am familiar with most Unices and the tools on them. They aren't much different than a standard Linux box, so I can't imagine that it would be that hard. But I am inexperienced, so I'll take your word for it. Footsteps- Why isn't IBM AIX Unix? AIX transcended from System V. AIX itself is an acronym standing fro Advanced IBM UniX. Please enlighten us how IBM AIX is not Unix.

By: treb0r

treb0r — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:45:01 +0000

I’ve known a few people over the years who cock a snook at GNU/Linux and swear by the various BSDs instead. One guy I know used to go on about the academic background to BSD, and how the sheer number of GNU/Linux developers would never outweigh the more advanced skills of the BSD community. ESR predicted that the opposite would inevitably happen. I think it obviously has.

On the other hand, don’t forget kids, Gnu’s Not Unix…

By: Footsteps

Footsteps — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:11:15 +0000

First of all, AIX ain’t UNIX.

Second, if you’re in a big AIX shop administering and promoting AIX servers then you probably don’t know much about UNIX. Or you’re an IBM salesman.

By: Paul cartwright

Paul cartwright — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:04:34 +0000

well, I used to work for AT&T and I installed AT&T Unix SYS V .
now I run SUSE on my desktop and XP/Kubuntu on my laptop. The only reason I haven’t switched to Kubuntu on my desktop is that my wife doesn’t like change.I think the only real difference between the perceived REAL UNIX & LINUX is that the REAL UNIX didn’t have a GUI. We did everything from the command line. As far as I am concerned, Kubuntu **IS** the new UNIX with a GUI.

By: jldugger

jldugger — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:37:29 +0000

Truly written by someone who’s never tried to migrate an application from “real UNIX” to Linux. Or from any UNIX or another UNIX. Linux is different enough that many times applications that were written for much older UNIXes will need to be modified. And Linux has changed considerably a couple times. It may change again, who knows.

This sort of stuff matters for the commercial UNIX systems people buy for reliability. Real UNIX in these cases means “well tested”. But for most BSD users, Real UNIX just generally feel like that heritage is worth something. It’s not.

But try doing a migration on your own sometime and see what breaks. You might be lucky enough to discover that your software vendors stuck with POSIX specs rather than tying their software to the OS they sold it to you on.

By: Vek

Vek — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:53:26 +0000

Sounds all too familiar… when I was there a couple years ago, UCI had a lab with a bunch of ‘solaris graphics workstations’. We’d sit there coding for hours in some horrible GUI or something (it was locked down and we could not install KDE or Gnome or anything useful) to make something that barely ran ultra slowly in OpenGL, while longingly looking just 3 rows down at the brand new pentium 4′s with ridiculously good video cards…. which we couldn’t use because ‘these are graphics workstations, they’re obviously better and what the real world uses for graphics’.

Universities are soooooo slooooooow.