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The Linux distillery Isn't Linux just UNIX under a different name?
The Linux distillery Isn't Linux just UNIX under a different name? | Isn't Linux just UNIX under a different name? |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Thursday, 21 August 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 It’s important to realise that the UNIX camp had become increasingly fragmented. More and more vendors were producing their own flavour based on either the System V or BSD variants such as IBM’s AIX, Digital Corporation’s Ultrix, Hewlett Packard’s HP/UX as well as the previously mentioned SunOS and Solaris from Sun Microsystems.In fact, this brings us to possibly the most substantial difference between Linux and all the other various Unices – or *NIX releases: the GNU Public License, or GPL. You can buy a license to use UNIX. By contrast, your right to use Linux is expressly granted. It is freely available, and its underlying source code – every aspect of how it works – is rendered publicly available. Linux follows the Free Software Foundation’s radical licensing model which offers great liberty. A UNIX license from a commercial vendor has a profit strategy built into it. People offering Linux services may well have profit strategies – like paid support – but Linux itself does not. It is free to anyone who wishes to use it in the ways they see fit. This includes modifying it for their custom needs. This means that a financial barrier to access is eradicated totally and furthermore there is no risk of vendor lock in like you might experience with UNIX providers. It also means organisations large enough to have their own IT departments always have the choice of doing things themselves or using support providers of their own choosing. The Free Software Foundation began life with the goal of providing an overall free operating system. They titled this project “GNU” for “GNU’s not UNIX.” Work kicked off with the Emacs text editor and continued through the development of a compiler (gcc) as well as other major pieces of software. In fact, you could pretty much get an existing SunOS (or other) system and swap out everything for GNU equivalents except one fundamental item. What was missing was a GNU kernel. On the flip side, Torvalds developed a free kernel but did not have text editors or compilers! The two projects naturally fused giving an entire suite of software which was all free of price, freely available and free for use in any desired manner. It is this collective suite which is widely referred to as “Linux” or even GNU/Linux. CONTINUED |
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