Is Linux Just Another Unix Flavor?
An operating system is a kernel, a supporting cast of programs, and a concept. For certain commercial entities, it’s also a marketing campaign, hype and profit. But, is the Linux operating system just another flavor of the Unix operating system? Yes. But, it’s also much more.
What you, as a business owner, want to know is if Linux is enough like Unix that you can transition from a commercial Unix flavor to Linux with minimum hassle and expense. The answer is yes.
You might also ask, "With how much certainty can you guarantee that my applications will make that same transition?" Red Hat, Novell and Canonical can give the best answers, but their consultants will tell you that only in rare cases will your applications have trouble making the trip from your Unix environment to a Linux-hosted one. Rest assured that your issues aren't so unique that their highly skilled Linux engineers can't tackle them.
Unix has different “flavors” that generally refer to differences injected by their development teams to take advantage of proprietary hardware features or to capitalize on special software innovations, such as volume management or virtualization. Such flavors are Sun’s Solaris, IBM’s AIX, HP’s HP-UX, AT&T's System Vr4, BSD Unix, DEC Unix, Mac OS X, and the beloved SCO Unix.
A Unix flavor might differ from others in its administration tools, its filesystem types, its process handling, and its device names, but each is undeniably Unix. But, why? What makes any one of those systems Unix yet so different?
Unix systems, as different as they might be, have a lot in common with each other. Type the ‘ls’ command on any Unix system and something predictable happens: You will see a file listing. The /etc directory contains system configuration files, the system password file, and startup files. These common threads collectively form Unix.
The saying, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it must be a duck," is usually quoted to make a point about some issue during a political debate. Similarly, if Linux looks like Unix, behaves like Unix, and handles security and processes like Unix, then it must be Unix--albeit a new and improved Unix flavor, but Unix nonetheless.
