*BSD News Article 92217


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From: guy@netapp.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: question
Date: 28 Mar 1997 17:09:32 -0800
Organization: Network Appliance
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Message-ID: <5hhq4c$ate@tooting.netapp.com>
References: <333B573E.294B@ecs.school.net.hk> <5hhhkl$6mm@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:2900

Alex Wu (nausica@ecs.school.net.hk) wrote:
>Anyone would tell me the difference between Netware & Unix  ?
>Also , what is Linux ?

eric richard haszlakiewicz <haszlaki@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>	Unix is the general OS idea which includes processes + multiprocessing,
>memory protection schemes so processes don't trample on each other, networking
>and many other features.

Nope.  Operating systems with those features existed before UNIX did,
and UNIX existed before versions that supported networking did.  (I
shall assume that by "multiprocessing" you mean "multitasking" rather
than "supporting more than one *processor*"; I generally hear
"multiprocessing" used to mean the latter, rather than the former, and
not all versions of UNIX support the latter).

Modern UNIXes support all of those features (with "multiprocessing"
meaning "preemptive multitasking"; as indicated, not all of them support
more than one CPU in the same machine).

>Netware is a version of it from Novell (I think).

Nope.  Netware isn't UNIX; it's a completely different OS, and I'm not
sure it supports memory protection between processes.  Novell used to
have an OS called Unixware, which was a version of UNIX, but they sold
it to SCO.

>Along with others like SunOs/Solaris, IRIX, etc..., it is a commercial unix.
>Linux is a free version of unix based on System V.

Or, at least, modelled after System V; none of the code came from any
licensed version of UNIX (unless the licensor gave it away).