Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!ames!newsfeed.gsfc.nasa.gov!news!kstailey From: kstailey@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov (Kenneth Stailey) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Differences between AT&T, BSD, SCO, Netware and Linux UNIX Date: 17 Mar 1995 03:23:35 GMT Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- Greenbelt, Maryland USA Lines: 51 Message-ID: <KSTAILEY.95Mar16222335@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov> References: <alock.8.001563A2@ozemail.com.au> <D5J7Go.Fs8@rci.ripco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov In-reply-to: karlm@ripco.com's message of Thu, 16 Mar 1995 11:48:23 GMT >> Hello World, >> I am planning to change my OS from MS-DOS to UNIX. As I know, there >> are several versions of UNIX available in the market such as AT&T, >> BSD, SCO, Netware, Linux and ...... etc. Since I am a novice to >> UNIX, is there anybody can tell me what are their differences? Many >> thanks. > I've been researching the same thing myself and here is what I've found: > The Linux newsgroups get around 10 X the traffic that the BSD ones do > and I subscribed to all of them I could find out about. While it may > not indicate that more are using Linux there are sure more who are > active in the newsgroups which means to me that I'm more likely to get > a question answered. It is true that more people use Linux that the free releases of BSD, but more people use MS-DOS than Linux. Does that make MS-DOS better? As for the newsgroups, NetBSD has mailing lists where most of the support is doled out. > I've found a number of books devoted to Linux and how to get it > running. I've even been able to help a few others by what I've read > even having not installed it yet. I have yet to see a book on any of > the free BSD versions. It may be that there are some for comercial > versions that apply (if so somebody let me know), but I have no idea > which ones. BSD has existed since 1977. For practical purposes BSD is UNIX although a variety of other organizations own or have owned the UNIX name and this prevents BSD from being called UNIX. Nobody would be using UNIX in 1995 if BSD had not coaxed UNIX off of primitive hardware and given it impressive features like demand paging and internetworking. _The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System_ (ISBN 0-201-06196-1) is a good book. Parts of _The Design of the UNIX Operating System_ (ISBN 0-13-201799-7) are dedicated to BSD too. They will not tell you how to install BSD on your PC though. The whole "give it all away for free to PC users" thing is very recent in UNIX history--three out of thirty-five years. It will probably become better documented as it catches on. The O'Reilly books now cover 4.4BSD administration. The /usr/share/doc heirarchy inside BSD is also full of useful information. The best way to decide if you like an operating system will always be to try it yourself and not let others think for you.