Linux and Unix are two popular operating systems. Reality is Unix is the predecessor of Linux and their share a lot of things that are similar. But there are different things between them too. In this post, we will look at similarities and differences in both operating systems.
Price and Cost
Linux:
Linux consists of different flavors of names distributions. Most of the distributions are free. Some of the distributions are paid or provide support at a cost. Red Hat and Ubuntu is most popular distributions provides support at a cost.
Unix:
Unix operating systems have paid. There is no free Unix operating system. Their cost changes according to their licensing model.
Development and Distribution
Linux:
Linux development is done on the internet in an open-source manner. There is no cost to get source code of Linux. Volunteers or vendors support the development of different parts of the Linux and distributions. For example, a disk vendor implements driver and file system part of the Linux operating system. A volunteer develops a Gnome desktop. Most of the Linux operating system and the utilities can get from the internet.
Unix:
Unix systems are divided into different flavors but main vendor is AT&T. There are also various commercial vendors offers Unix and related support services.
Manufacturer
Linux:
Linux creator and the current technical lead is Linux Torvalds. There are companies like Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. those create distributions and valued services over these distributions.
Unix:
Unix has mainly 3 big vendors named Oracle(Solaris), IBM (AIX), HP(HP-UX).
Userbase
Linux:
Linux user-based covers a lot of different user population. From system administrator to graphic experts to students. Linux provides different features to different user communities which makes it popular all of them.
Unix:
Unix is mainly designed for enterprise systems. Unix is used for servers, mainframes, etc. But there is no user community for personal use.
File System Support
Linux:
Linux supports a lot of different old and new file systems like ext2,ext3,ext4,jfs, reiserfs, xfs, btrfs, fat, zfs, xfs,gpfs.
Unix:
Unix file system support is more conservative than Linux like jfs, gpfs, hfs, xfs, zfs.
Text Mode Interface
Unix and Linux:
Both of the Linux and Unix provides different shell options like Bash, Sh, Csh
GUI
Linux:
Linux typically provides a lot of different desktop environments from KDE, GNOME to Xfce,twm.
Unix:
Unix desktop environment support is very poor. Unix designed as a command-line operating system but recently desktop environment named Common Desktop Environment is supported.
Security
Linux and Unix:
Both of the operating systems are secure. There are very low attacks of malware development to those systems. The general usage in the user operating system for Unix and Linux is very low which makes them an unpopular target for attacks.
Architecture
Linux:
Linux support two dozen CPU architectures including x86, x8_64, ARM variants. The open-source philosophy makes Linux very portable operating system.
Unix:
Unix support for CPU architecture to enterprise-level hardware like x86,x86_64, PA-RISC, etc. Unix does not have ARM support.