[svlug] The main difference between UNIX/LINUX

[John Conover]

Afroze Mohammad writes:
> Hi All,
> 
> This might be a stupid question, but I am a newbie to Linux. I have 
> looked online for the answer but got confused finally... :)
> 
> Can anyone explain me clearly what is the main difference between UNIX.LINUX
>

Its complicated, and the question of what Unix is, and who owns it,
has been in and out of the US Courts since the inception of Unix. For
details, see:

    http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051013231901859

There are many implementations of Unix, (Unix is an OS architecture-as
opposed to actually being an OS,) and the standards body for Unix is
at:

    http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html
    http://www.opengroup.org/certification/

who owns the name "Unix," as a registered trademark.

Anyone can write an OS, and if it passes the standards outlined by The
Open Group, (it has to pass their certification program,) it can be
called Unix, (or variant thereof.)

Linux is an independent implementation of the Unix architecture, (at
least for the most part,) with some enhancements, (but has not been
certified by The Open Group.)

Linux 1.0 was a reasonably complete independent implementation of the
Unix 3.2 architecture, (what the standards folks called the SVIG
specification from AT&T-the prevailing Unix of the time,) and was
placed in a BBS directory named "linux" for download in 1994, and the
name stuck; Linux 1.0 was based, (to some extent,) on Minix, which was
another, not-so-standard, implementation of Unix 3.2.

So, technically, Linux and Unix are much the same thing-they are the
same architecture-however, Linux is an unencumbered independent
implementation, and as such, has not been certified as Unix.

	John

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/