The PC Primer: Operating Systems: Linux & Unix

Linux & Unix

UNIX

Considered by it’s aficionados to be the ultimate OS. A true multitasking OS and until the advent of Windows NT and the latest incarnation of Novell, UNIX servers formed and it’s probably true to say still form the backbone of the world wide web. UNIX runs on different hardware than the standard PC, however PC based versions of UNIX are available and give excellent results.

The most popular of these, it would be fair to say is ‘Red Hat’s Linux, Linux being the generic name for PC based UNIX. Until recently Linux was deemed to be a bit of a Trekkies toy’ however as more and more hardware companies have produced linux drivers for their hardware, it has gained impetus and now as software houses are following suit Linux is beginning to be seen, particularly by those users who already have a foot in the UNIX camp as a viable alternative to both SunOS (UNIX OS) and Microsoft’s Windows. Both of which will interface with it when running the TCP/IP protocol. Red Hat Linux now has a good ‘Windows’ like GUI and is , at about £40.00 a real alternative.

Another Linux is 'Ubuntu' and this is a gem! i've got it on machines both at home and work. It integrates well with Windows networks comes with the 'firefox' browser, 'Open office' a cross platform MS Office workalike.

It's free, well the cost of a 500mb download. It is available as a .iso file, a file that you can download in Windows then burn to a CDROM and install. It needs a reasonable machine to work but not a really fast one, I've got it on a P4 1.4Mhz with 512 RAM at home.

Visit the Ubuntu website

Here we see an Ubuntu Linux network settings dialogue box. this machine has two network cards, the card eth1 is connected to the house network, while eth0works the internet connection through the router.

The internet connection is made through a router, the DNS IP no is the default IP for the netgear router and that's all it needed to get on the web

‘X’ Windows

is the UNIX GUI and allows applications and utilities to be run within windows. Lovers of UNIX can tune the desktop to perform many tasks outside the capabilities of all but the latest PC’s. Fig 1-3 illustrates a Telnet window, a way of running a session on a UNIX workstation, at a ‘command line’ level.

An ‘X’ window

Larger organisations, particularly those that need to run mixed OS's, can run 'X' windows sessions within the MS Windows environment. Applications such as Hummingbird's Exceed for Windows will allow this.