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I have recently visited www.bds.org, and after loking at the software they offer I war troubled because I did not know the difference betwqeen any, because I am thinking that all UNIX OS are basically the same, just a little different the basic programming of it and nbothing else, but obviousl I am wrong. Can anyone recocomend for me to use in hpes of learning more oabotu the UNIX operating systems?
I think you may be getting ahead of yourself from your early posts, but here goes:
If you want to learn *NIX. I would get SuSE Linux. It has an easy installer, NTFS resizer, and is fairly easy to learn. Other than that, a good idea is to get one of the Red Hat Linux books that includes a copy. You get a huge book that gives you a complete reference, plus a copy of Red Hat Linux.
You may want to change the link to www.bsd.org .... :)
I would also go for the linux suse distro....I am also a newbie and tried at first the debian distro....no hope. Star with suse (but be careful with your boot configuration-avoid lilo it can cause problems and i am speaking on my own experience
What I have done in the past and still do is download each one and install them on a test machine if you don't have a spare machine I would backup any important data before starting the install and check to make sure the backup works and make a choice from that. each OS is roughly the same but the packages you install is what makes the difference.
Just to explain the differences between Unix, BSD, and Linux, I am going to throw this in:
Unix is/was the original. There were many variations of Unix, and ownership issues were and still are complicated. BSD and Linux evolved from this. I do not know much about *BSD, but Linux is one of my hobbies. Basically, when Linux was first started, it was designed to be a new Unix, but due to the ownership issues, it was written completely differently. Linux shares much with Unix, and has about the same functionality and compatibility, but was written comepletely differently in an effort to avoid copyright issues (SCO ring a bell?) This worked until recently.
At command line level, the systems are relatively identical. They all look, feel, and act much like Unix. They use many of the same commands (ls, cd, etc.), file structures, and programs (CUPS for example, a print server). And they all act in relatively similar manners. The place where the systems all diverge is split between the most basic ways in which they were written, and the software that comes with them. All of the Linux distributions that I know of come with a wide variety of software. Everything from The K Desktop Environment (My favorite GUI), to image software like the GIMP. Just about any Unix, BSD, or Linux program can be made to run on just about any Unix, BSD, or Linux system.
I hope this clears things up a bit. If this was confusing, I'll clear it up when I've had more caffeine.
suse and debian are good distros, they're basically sugarcoated versions of unix. i don't find linux as reliable as unix though, the only time i use it is if i need weird drivers or something.
personally i think freebsd is the best os out there (except maybe mac osX). we use netbsd at work for print servers, but i'm not very impressed with it, my experience is that it's much slower then free/openbsd. but with enough effort you can make linux run as good as unix and vice versa, it's all about what you're comfortable with.
ps -- http://bsdforums.com/forums is an excellent reference
It does me so proud to see everyone saying SuSE :)
Now, for actual UNIX, BSD and Linux are not really UNIX, BSD is closer in that Free BSD had legal action taken on them by AT&T for using their UNIX code, so the switched over to the 4.4BSD kernel and continued giving it away. BSD no longer contains any UNIX code, but alot of FreeBSD purists will tell you how FreeBSD has more right to be called UNIX than System V does.
Linux is an OS by Linus Torvalds. He created it when he was pissed at the Minix creator for not makign improvements he wanted to see. So Linus said **** off and built a revolutionary OS that is free.
If you want REAL UNIX, you'll either need to be rich, or download the X86 Version of Solaris. That's an actual version of UNIX, a good one too. And you can get it free right now. I don't have the web page address on hand but a search should bring it up.
If you have the free time, grab a version of everything. SuSE is one of the best in Linux, but if you want a more UNIX like experiance, get slackware or BSD. Free BSD is the easiest to install by far, but none are hard if you can read.
Get SuSE Linux and install it, after you're comfortable with it, close X down and use it. After you can do this, you can use any distro.
The easiest install out of all the *bsds would have to be freebsd's sysinstall utility. From what i've tried (freebsd, openbsd, gentoo, redhat)..I'm assuming openbsd is more difficult to configure then freebsd. Also, freebsd contains a wealth of documentation at their main site http://freebsd.org/handbook more so than any other free OS. if Considering the ports collection one will have very little problem installing software because of the fact that all of the depencencies will be checked for and installed. Also, if considering portupgrade one will have little problem maintaining installed packages. FreeBSD is rock solid, and has only a small amount of actual viruses that affect it. Also, if considering linux emulation many linux applications run on it. FreeBSD overall has been a stronger operating system than the others I've tested.